


where the falling angels meet the rising apes

by cosmicocean



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016), Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Project Blackwing (Dirk Gently), death tries to be stoic but humanity is his soft spot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 13:50:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9660083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicocean/pseuds/cosmicocean
Summary: The thing sweeps its scythe and straightens. It must sense eyes on it, because it turns it’s head and looks right at Svlad.It is a skull’s face, grinning and bleached. Svlad stares.It tilts it’s head, like it’s watching a particularly fascinating documentary, or a cat attempting to catch a laser pointer created dot.AH, it says. It’s mouth doesn’t move, but Svlad hears it’s voice all the same, resonating deep and forever. INTERESTING.A story of Death and the boy who could see him, through the years.





	

**Author's Note:**

> You don't strictly speaking need to have read Discworld or Good Omens to understand this, but it'll certainly help.

When Svlad Cjelli is thirteen, a man dies in front of him.

It all happens very fast. He goes out to check the mail when he hears the screech of tires. He turns around to see a car moving madly fast. Svlad jumps back as the car zooms close to his house and ends up slamming into the tree in their front yard. The driver, who does not appear to have been wearing a seatbelt, shoots out of the car and hits the tree. His body, bloodied from launching through the windshield, falls limp on top of his car. 

Svlad is frozen where he stands, clutching the flyers and mail informing them that they’d won a million dollars if they’d just provide their credit card information that he’d pulled from the box. 

And then, quite suddenly, something is standing by the corpse. It is very tall, and wearing robes that are blacker than any darkness Svlad has ever seen. It holds a scythe. 

The thing sweeps it’s scythe and straightens. It must sense eyes on it, because it turns it’s head and looks right at Svlad.

It is a skull’s face, grinning and bleached. Svlad stares.

It tilts it’s head, like it’s watching a particularly fascinating documentary, or a cat attempting to catch a laser pointer created dot.

AH, it says. It’s mouth doesn’t move, but Svlad hears it’s voice all the same, resonating deep and forever. INTERESTING.

Svlad’s not quite sure how to describe it’s disappearance. It is like it takes a step to the side, and takes that step into a crinkle of the Universe.

People who had seen the accident will call the police and the ambulance. Svlad will stay in his exact position, mail still in hand, until his parents come outside and guide him away.

His parents generally have an air of only polite interest in Svlad. When he will look back, many years in the future bearing a different name, he will think that his parents did not truly understand him. Many teenagers, of course, go through a time of thinking their parents do not understand them. But in Svlad’s case, he will know it to be true. It’s not that surprising, considering all the strange things that happened to and around him. But his parents, he thinks, were incapable of loving what they could not understand. They liked him well enough, and it had been enough to get by on, but it wasn’t love, and so when they notice things about Svlad, it is only the strange things about him and not the good things. He had been particularly good at chess, when he played at school sometimes in the chess club (the chess club was exciting because he liked the game and because even if they wouldn’t acknowledge him outside of the meetings, there kids in school would talk to him, even if it was only things like “your move”), and a good artist. These were not things that his parents noticed. When they had announced they were moving to America, Svlad had not been involved in the conversations regarding where they were going to live or even what room would be his. 

What they _did_ notice was when he was acting strange, and certainly after the accident this was the case. It wasn’t necessarily the dead man that had captured his interest. The accident had _frightened_ him, certainly. He had nightmares about it, when he would wake up in a cold sweat and turn over to scream into his pillow so he wouldn’t wake his parents. 

But what he couldn’t stop thinking of when he was awake was not the careening car, or the man flying out of it. It was the thing with the scythe.

Svlad isn’t stupid. Everyone knows what the Grim Reaper is supposed to look like. Svlad just had never been sure he’d _see_ one. Or _the_ one, possibly. Svlad doesn’t know if there’s only one Grim Reaper or if there’s many Grim Reapers filling out the ranks. There’s a lot of people who die every day. If they operated on a team, he wouldn’t be surprised. He wonders if they have punchcards. He’s heard of punchcards. They seem neat.

He’s not scared of it.

He’s _fascinated._

 

The thing is, Svlad doesn’t stop seeing it around.

A man has a heart attack at a restaurant. The thing is there. There’s a homeless man on the corner becoming stiller and stiller as the seconds tick by. Svlad sees the thing standing in silence, waiting.

Death, Svlad thinks, is everywhere. He’d just never noticed it before.

One time he’s in a park, sketching the trees, when the thing comes by. Svlad wouldn’t describe it as walking, per se. Gliding might come close, but still isn’t quite right. It is simply there, and is there in a way that seems to be moving, or maybe impersonating the appearance of moving. Svlad plucks up his courage.

“How come I can see you and others can’t?” 

It looks down at Dirk, who is still sitting with his sketchbook. His hands are shaking, pencil carefully taken off the paper so his trembling won’t interfere with the drawing.

I DO NOT KNOW, it answers. SO FAR I HAVE ONLY MET ONE OTHER HERE WHO CAN SEE ME AND ACKNOWLEDGES MY EXISTENCE. THAT IS TWO MORE THAN NORMAL.

“Who else?”

It says nothing.

“What’s your name?”

I AM DEATH.

Svlad frowns, momentarily diverted from his fear. It’s not so much the it itself that’s frightening him as the presence of it. The fear seems to be fading. “That’s more what you do than your name, isn’t it? It’s like if my name was Student and not Svlad.”

It (and Svlad thinks that isn’t right, the voice in his head sounds male, as much as an echoing call of eternity can, and no person should be called an “it”) is quiet for a moment and Svlad wonders if he’s overstepped a boundary and if Death can kill people for offenses or if he simply collects the aftermath.

YOU ARE PECULIAR.

“Isn’t most of humanity?” Svlad’s been reading philosophy books lately.

YES. BUT YOU CAN SEE ME. THIS MAKES YOU MORE PECULIAR.

“Why are you here?”

A MAN WAS WALKING HIS DOG WHEN HE EXPERIENCED WHAT YOU WOULD REFER TO AS A STROKE.

“Oh. Should I…” Svlad feels uncertain. “Should I do something to help him?”

HE CANNOT BE HELPED.

“There’s no… loophole or anything?” Svlad’s a little dismayed that a man is dead somewhere in his vicinity and he can’t do much about it.

THE UNIVERSE HAS IT’S THIN PLACES AND IT’S FISSURES. NONE OF THESE APPLY TO ME. I AM INEVITABLE. WHAT I TAKE IS NOT RETURNED.

“Am I a thin place?”

PERHAPS. PERHAPS YOU ARE MERELY PECULIAR.

With that, Death sidesteps once more, and vanishes.

 

Svlad reads a lot about legends of Death. When one of Svlad’s neighbors dies and Svlad is in his yard reading, he sees the scythe peeking out over the top of their fence. He dragsout their rickety old step stool that his father uses sometimes to prune their trees and stands on it so he can lean over the fence. His growth spurt hasn’t quite hit yet. He’s holding out hope for the next year, perhaps.

He’s not that perturbed about Mrs. Angle. She was a rather terrible person. She once called him nasty words that close-minded people generally reserve for homosexuality when he accidentally dropped a soda on her lawn while walking past.

“So do you do the killing or are they already dead when you get there?” Svlad asks. Death looks at him. Or rather, he turns his head so the skull is facing him. Svlad’s not sure _how_ exactly he _looks_ at him, per se, if he’s got no eyes, but he’s sure that he sees him nonetheless.

I DO NOT KILL.

He doesn’t elaborate. Svlad moves onto another question, and another, and another. Death answers some, others leaving to the empty air.

“Do you have a family?” Svlad asks eventually. “ _Can_ you have a family?”

This seems to give him pause.

A GRANDDAUGHTER, he admits. SHE IS ON ANOTHER WORLD.

“There’s more than one world? Is it in our Universe? Are there parallel universes?”

THAT WORLD EXISTS, MUCH AS THIS ONE DOES.

“Are they aliens?”

THEY ARE PEOPLE. MUCH IS ALIEN TO YOU. YOU ARE A CHILD. YOU FIND MANY ALIEN THINGS EVERY DAY.

This is something he hadn’t considered, even in his philosophy reading. He nods in appreciation.

“When you vanish, how do you do that?”

I CAN DO MANY THINGS YOU CAN’T.

“Can you do a handstand? I’m rather good at those. I haven’t mastered cartwheels yet, but I’m sure I’ll get there.”

I HAVE NEVER ATTEMPTED A HANDSTAND.

“You should.”

I WILL TAKE IT UNDER CONSIDERATION.

He disappears once more.

 

Sometimes, Svlad feels a tug in his stomach, and he can’t explain it. He finds things when he follows the tug, strange things.

It’s what baffles his parents to the point where they have put up poster board to block any warm feelings they may have had towards him. He’s been having the tugs all his life, knows them all too well. Sometimes he finds simple things like the cash box missing from the bake sale. Other times he finds things like the murder weapon to a triple homicide that police had been trying to find for months.

One time the tug leads him to find a girl, crying under one of the sinks in the boy’s bathroom at school. She can’t be more than eleven. 

“Why are you in the _boy’s_ bathroom?” is the first question that stumbles out of his mouth. Which isn’t _really_ that surprising. He doesn’t have any siblings, or any friends (everyone else knows there is Something Off about him and tends to keep a wide berth), so he isn’t confronted with crying people that often.

The girl wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “Went for the first room that I could find,” she answers.

“That makes sense.” Svlad hesitates a moment. He’s not sure that there’s a boy’s bathroom in the world that is truly clean. He hasn’t any idea about the girl’s bathrooms, but he’s heard stories spoken loudly by boys who had been in them, and from their accounts they had seemed a lot cleaner. He decides personal comfort is less of an issue in this situation and sits down in front of the girl, who seems to have no concern for the relatively unsanitary position that she’s in, grimacing a little as he does so. “Are you all right?” 

It’s a bit of a pointless question. She’s obviously not all right. He still isn’t quite sure what to say and that seemed to be the thing that came out.

“No.” Her answer sets off a fresh wave of tears. “Everything sucks.”

Svlad thinks first about what his parents would do. He doesn’t generally cry in front of them, so that comes up with nothing. He thinks about what he would have liked to have heard in those situations.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he tries. The girl swallows.

“Can’t,” she tells him. “Don’t know what to say.”

“Ah. Well.” He clears his throat, not quite sure how to proceed.

“Why’s your voice different?”

It takes Svlad a second, but he gets it. “I’m not from here, I’m from a totally different place. England.”

“Oh. I’m from here.”

“Here is… nice.” Here is terrible. Svlad misses home. He doesn’t like his house and his neighbors and his school and his _life._ A few years from now, Svlad will look at it with rose colored lenses. Over a decade later, he will look at it for what it was: better than what came after, but with the understanding that “better” does not mean “good”. For now, however, everything is awful, and Svlad can’t imagine it getting worse.

The girl gives an aborted shrug.

“If you don’t want to talk, would you just like some company?”

She seems to consider it. “Yeah, okay.”

They sit like that for the full lunch period, the girl’s sobs abating as the time passes. When the bell sounds, he stands and holds out a hand with the intent to help her up. She shakes her head and stands on her own. She looks up at him. She’s a tiny thing, hair plastered to her face from her tears, eyes and cheeks red.

“Thanks,” she tells him. “You’re good.”

“Good at what?”

“You’re just good.”

She seems to deliberate, then wraps her arms around him. Svlad doesn’t have much experience with hugs, but he’s seen movies and he has an idea of the mechanics so he hugs her back. She’s a slip of a thing, his arms sliding completely around her easily. 

She pulls away, wiping her nose once more. She jerks out a little nod and leaves, not meeting his eyes. Svlad stares after her, realizing he _helped_ someone. Maybe he’s more than just a weirdo. Maybe he’s a _helpful_ weirdo.

He realizes then, standing in the bathroom alone, he never learned her name.

 

Svlad hears on the news about a fire that consumes a whole house a few blocks away. The family, it turns out, were the heads of a drug smuggling ring. The police believe that they knew the cops were on their trail and burned the whole house down rather than be taken in for it. Their one child, a daughter, is missing, presumed dead. When Svlad looks up at the television from his homework, the picture of the crying girl is there. 

He still doesn't know her name.

 

Years later, he will learn it.

 

Svlad is not sure his parents necessarily care enough to worry, but they do seem vaguely perturbed about his latest reading habits. He overhears them once (he is a very good overhearer: it’s one of the only ways to learn anything interesting, really) discussing what they could possibly do to bring Svlad back to some semblance of normal, or, as they phrase it, “normal for him, anyway”. 

But then comes Colonel Riggins, and the CIA, and they never have the chance.

 

In retrospect, Svlad can’t believe he went willingly. At the time, he is excited.

Both in retrospect and at the time, Svlad isn’t that surprised that his parents give him over to Blackwing.

That doesn’t mean it doesn't ache a little.

 

(he wonders in sadder moments if they were paid off for it, and if they chose the money over him, and how hard the choice was)

 

The problem, as Svlad sees it, is that everything is terrible.

He’s working on figuring out individually terrible things, but that is the main, overarching theme. He’s making a list.

-he’s not allowed to see any of the other subjects

-they keep asking him questions

-sometimes they take blood and he never used to be scared of needles but now they make his stomach turn and make him want to start shaking

-other reasons related to experiments that make Svlad feel sicker and sadder when he starts listing them so that’s enough for now

Riggins had made all kinds of promises when Svlad agreed to come, and then in those early days. He’d promised that there would be people like him here, “psychic people”, and people who could tell him why he was this way. He’d known that Svlad had been miserable at home and at school, and promised him that this was where things would change. Where he would be happy. But Riggins had visited less and less, and things had gotten worse and worse, and now he never sees him at all.

Well, he’d kept one promise. Things had certainly changed.

Svlad is hunkered down in his cell (because that’s all it is, really, four walls, a ceiling and a floor, a bed, cramped space in between) and staring blankly at the floor one night when he becomes aware that something is Different. At first he mistakes it for a tug and ignores it. There’s not much he can do from in here about it. Bu then he realizes it’s not a tug (which has recently left his stomach and spread everywhere, thrumming through his veins, singing that he belongs and is supposed to be doing somewhere and something else, and he misses them being just in his stomach _so much_ ) but a presence. He looks up.

Death looks vaguely cramped in Svlad’s little cell. Svlad stares.

“Why are you here?” he asks, surprised. “Did Blackwing poison me?”

NO. ONE OF YOUR FELLOW INMATES KILLED A GUARD AND I CAME TO COLLECT HIM. I SPENT SOME TIME WITH HER AND AM NOW HERE.

Svlad can’t bring himself to feel sad that a guard’s died. They keep telling him everything’s connected here, and while they mean in a larger sense about the Universe he’s sure that in this case it will mean that somehow he will be punished for it, but he hates his jailers, and he’s not going to feel bad that. Wait. Stop. “You spent time with her? Is she the other one who can see you? Is she here? Who is she?”

Death says nothing and Svlad feels himself deflate a little. He might not have been able to see her, but it would have been nice to know.

THERE ARE RULES THAT EVEN I MUST FOLLOW. Death sounds almost apologetic, Svlad thinks, but accepts the possibility that he may be making it up to make himself feel better.

“I understand,” he mumbles. And he does, even though he thinks he might have preferred not to. If the Universe can make him the way he is, there’s no real reason it can’t make rules that even Death has to obey.

IT HAS BEEN SOME TIME. YOU SEEM TO HAVE BECOME LONGER.

“I have.” Svlad’s been in Blackwing for he thinks roughly three years now, which means that even if he doesn’t know the date, he knows he _should_ be about sixteen. He’d hit his growth spurt maybe a year and a half ago. The pains from it had hurt tremendously. “I didn’t enjoy it very much.”

YOU ALSO APPEAR TO BE NARROWER.

“They don’t feed us much.” Svlad may not have been very happy on the outside all the time, but at least he was fed properly. Now he’s just skinny and tired all the time. “They like to keep the freaks as docile as possible, and I guess that involves feeding us less.”

YOU ARE NOT A FREAK. 

Svlad snorts. "Sure. Because if I was normal, than I'd be here."

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS NORMAL. THERE IS ONLY WHAT IS PERCEIVED AS NORMAL. IT IS A HUMAN CONSTRUCT.

"Well, it's a human construct that's pretty intent on kicking me in the gut.”

IT IS A HUMAN CONSTRUCT, Death repeats. THIS MEANS YOUR PERCEPTION OF NORMALITY ONLY AFFECTS YOU UNTIL YOU DISMANTLE IT WITHIN YOURSELF.

He hadn't thought of it like that. He considers it. 

"So I'm not a freak if I don't consider myself a freak?"

CORRECT. 

"And it's... it's kind of an act of rebellion, isn't it? If I don't think of myself in the terms that people like Blackwing have decided on?"

CORRECT. 

Svlad smiles a tiny bit and looks back down. He can't remember the last time he smiled. 

"Thanks."

FOR WHAT?

"Nobody's really talked to me like a person for a few years. It's nice." Riggins talked to him like he was a human being and not an experiment, but Riggins doesn't count. Perhaps he had been trusted once, and then halfway-trusted, but now he's on the top of the list of people who Must Not Be Talked To, And If Talked To Must Not Be Told The Truth. Even when Svlad had trusted him, he'd never told Riggins about Death. That was personal, something to hold in his heart. There had been no one worth telling in his life yet, no one who might actually believe him. He's not quite sure if he ever will find such a person. It seems increasingly unlikely. 

Death is quiet for a moment. Svlad can't bring himself to look up and see if he's left. He's not sure he's equipped for the first person to speak to him about things other than "getting to the root of your psychic powers" or "directing your psychic abilities" in either less than or close to three years to leave quite yet. 

WOULD YOU CARE TO PLAY A GAME?

Svlad looks up. Death is holding a chessboard in one of his bony hands and a wooden box in another. Svlad's not quite sure where he put the scythe, or where the set came from. The black and white squares swirl with infinity. The box looks like it might be made of mahogany. No eternity churns within it from what Svlad can tell, but appearances are deceiving. He hasn't seen a chessboard in a very long time and he feels like he lights up a little on the inside. 

"Is it for my soul or anything?"

NO. I RARELY BET ON CHESS GAMES. 

"What do you bet on?"

VERY LITTLE.

"Do people ever try to cheat with you?" Svlad hasn't had the chance to ask this many questions in a while. It feels invigorating. 

PEOPLE TRY TO CHEAT ME ALL THE TIME. THEY NEVER SUCCEED. WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO PUT THE BOARD?

"Can you sit on the ground?"

Svlad has what he believes is without a doubt a unique experience in watching Death slowly sit down on the cement floor. He could be cross legged or he could be kneeling. The robes obscure it. 

"I kind of thought you'd just sort of be sitting once I asked." Svlad clambers off the bed to sit cross legged, hunched over the board that Death is laying down. "You know, without moving. Like you'd always been sitting."

I HAVE BEEN TOLD IT CAN BE UNNERVING.

"You don't have to pretend to be something you're not with me. I think that probably sucks.” He wouldn’t know. He’s never been able to pretend he’s anything other than what he is, really. “What color do you want to be?"

I BELIEVE YOU MAY BE ABLE TO GUESS. 

"Black, right."

They play chess for maybe two hours. Time is strange within Blackwing. Svlad even wins a couple times. He suspects that Death lets him win, but he doesn't mind. Svlad has been telling stories all night. Death has raised no objections. 

Svlad keeps yawning by the end of the final game, which he suspects is why Death begins packing up his side in the first place. He's telling his final story when he sweeps his hand too excitedly and sends one of the pieces flying under the bed. 

"Oops." He crawls under it and retrieves the piece. When he comes back, all the rest are gathered. 

"Here." He holds out his hand. 

KEEP IT. I HAVE MANY OTHER SETS. 

Svlad looks at the queen in his hands, white marble shot with gray.

THE QUEEN IS THE ONE PIECE THAT MAY MOVE IN ALL DIRECTIONS, Death tells him. IT SOMETIMES CAUSES HER TO BE CAPTURED, AND CAUSES HER PAIN. BUT SHE IS THE ONLY ONE WITH THE FREEDOM TO MOVE AND PERHAPS THINK ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE BOARD.

 

Svlad looks up. Death is gone. He closes his fist around the piece. It was cold when he grabbed it, but in his hand it is rapidly warming. 

 

The chess piece lives in Svlad's pillowcase for the next three months. Every night he digs his hand inside the case and falls asleep clutching it. After those three months it moves to his pocket, when the breakout happens. It's his only possession left but even if it wasn't, it may still have been the only one worth salvaging. 

 

Svlad spends a lot of time in libraries. They're warm and dry. The librarians don't mind him coming in and as long as he isn't loud or doesn't make a mess, they don't care if he stays until closing. 

So he reads a lot. First he decides to go through a dictionary. Dictionaries have lists of names in the back of them. He's been Svlad Cjelli for seventeen years. Practically it is smart to start using a name the CIA won't know. Personally he wants a name that doesn't carry the weight of his life before Blackwing and the weight of his life during behind it. 

So he checks the lists of names, but none of them really appeal to him, so instead he just starts going through words in the dictionary that aren't names and seeing what pops out at him. He makes it to the Ds when he feels a tug. He is elated and looks where the tug directs him.

_Dirk: a long straight-bladed dagger._

He puts the dictionary that he'd been reading down and panics for the rest of the day. He'd known that the CIA was trying to use him. What does it say about him that the word that really stands out to him, the word that the Universe pulls him towards, is a weapon? Is this what his calling is? Did Blackwing succeed with him?

He sleeps in his chosen alley that night fitfully, thinking about it all night. It takes him three days to pluck up the courage to start going through the dictionary again. He starts where he left off, hoping the Universe gives him the opportunity for something else. It doesn't take him long for his fingers to stop and stick on another word. 

_Gently: with a mild, kind, or tender manner._

Gently. First name? No. Last name. First name?

_Dirk Gently._

They tried to make him into a weapon, but they failed. He isn't a weapon. He is more and he is less than that.

His fingers find the chess piece in his pocket and start turning it over. 

He is not a weapon. 

He is the one with the freedom to move how he wants on the board.

He does not have to be the first to be the latter. 

He can be somebody other than their expectations. 

He can be Dirk Gently. 

 

It takes surprisingly little time to stop thinking of himself as "Svlad" and start thinking of himself as “Dirk”.

 

His days develop a sort of pattern. Wake up. Sneak into showers at one of the six gyms he alternates between using for their blessed hot water. Try to find a job. Fail at finding a job because he’s seventeen and just saying “I’m Dirk Gently” when they ask you questions about Social Security numbers and references and “place of residence” never seems to go over very well. Get lunch at a soup kitchen. Go to the library and read until closing. Go try and find a spot underneath the lip of a building or something. This continues on a loop. 

Dirk stumbles on the mystery section unintentionally. He likes to wander the library and just look at all the books. It was something he’d taken completely for granted before Blackwing, the existence of books. So when he ambles into the mystery section and tugs out a copy of _A Murder Is Announced_ , it is completely by accident.

This moment is, in retrospect, probably not _that_ accidental. He always ends up where he needs to be, despite the fact that it’s rarely where he intended to go.

He burns through all of Agatha Christie’s work. His favorite of her characters is Ms. Marple. He rereads all of her’s once he’s finished all the Christie books he hadn’t read yet. 

 

He starts calling his tugs intuitions.

 

He sees Death for the first time since Blackwing when he’s sitting on a sidewalk corner about a month and a half into his freedom. Death is just there, as he always is.

“Hello,” Dirk says, looking up at him. “What was it this time?”

A GENTLEMAN JUST HAD A HEART ATTACK IN HIS CAR. Death points a skeletal finger down the line of cars that are parked along the sidewalk. Dirk’s sure if he craned his neck he could see but he decides against it. YOU ARE CONSIDERABLY GRIMIER THAN THE LAST TIME I SAW YOU.

It’s been a couple days since Dirk had the opportunity to take a shower. He’s not surprised. “That makes sense.”

People rushing by ignore him even more than usual. A crazy homeless person talking to thin air is nothing new to them.

“I’m not called Svlad anymore.” It feels important to tell Death, even if he can’t explain why. “It’s not my name.”

I AM AWARE.

“What? How?”

Death looks down at him for a moment. Then he reaches into his robes and pulls something out. He stands to see it better.

Try as he might, Dirk can’t actually tell how much sand is left in the hourglass. He assumes that’s by design, and that Death is the only one who can really tell. But he’s also fairly sure that’s not the point of what he’s trying to communicate, so he casts his eyes around the rest of the hourglass until he sees something that makes him still.

The plaque on the bottom of the hourglass reads DIRK GENTLY.

“Did it change when I changed it?”

NO. MANY HAVE TRUE NAMES THAT ARE NOT SPOKEN TO OR BY OTHERS FOR MANY YEARS. IT DOES NOT CHANGE HOW TRUE THEY ARE. I HAVE TOLD YOU ONCE BEFORE THAT THERE ARE RULES, AND ONE OF THEM IS THAT TRUE NAMES ARE KNOWN.

Dirk swallows. “Oh.”

YES. Death returns the hourglass to his robes while Dirk does his best to quickly wipe his eyes. 

“So do you just carry that around with you or does it just show up when you need it to?”

THERE ARE-

“Rules, right, sorry.” He’s not _actually_ that sorry. One doesn’t find out where the rules lie if one doesn’t ask the questions. He suspects Death knows how un-sorry he is, but is gracious enough not to bring it up.

I MUST GO.

“Right, yes, of course.” He clears his throat. “Thank you. For showing me the- the thingie. It was nice to see. To know that I made the right choice.”

IT WAS NEVER A CHOICE IN THE FIRST PLACE. BUT YOU ARE WELCOME.

And he is gone.

 

Dirk gets a job washing dishes in a diner. He works five days a week from opening to closing with a break or two and is given two free meals a day. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to _do_ with money,” he tells Death at one point when they’re in the alley by the diner where Dirk tends to take some of his breaks. He’ll spend a lot of them sitting in a booth and reading, or listening to people around him talk to each other, but sometimes he heads out into the alley to look at the sky. He’s in a city (he’s still not entirely sure which one and is a bit nervous about asking anyone), so he can’t really see the stars, but even just having a sky to look at feels like a luxury after being in the Blackwing base for three years. 

I BELIEVE YOU EXCHANGE IT FOR GOODS OR SERVICES. Death usually hangs around with Dirk when they run into each other. Sometimes it’s only for a couple minutes, but it’s still nice to talk to someone, however briefly.

Dirk waves a hand.

“No, not _that_ , I know that part. I mean, where do I _put_ it?”

BANKS, IF YOU SHOULD LIKE TO KEEP IT. BANKS, IF YOU SHOULDN’T.

“I mean. What bank? Will they accept me when I have no identification? And how do I pay a tax?” Dirk looks up at Death from where he’s leaning against the wall by a dumpster. Death is simply standing next to him. Dirk may not have learned much, strictly speaking, about the anthropomorphic personification, but if there’s anything he _does_ know, it’s that Death does not lean. “Do _you_ know anything about taxes? Aren’t you and they often lumped together?”

I AM LUMPED TOGETHER WITH EVERYTHING, AT ONE POINT OR ANOTHER.

Something else he has on the list of things that he knows about him is that Death has a sense of humor, it’s just very much a bleak version of the word. Dirk doesn’t actually mind. He enjoys having someone to talk to, no matter how gallows it may be.

Gallows. Death. Ha.

Dirk changes the subject, feeling like he’s not going to get anywhere with the one he’s currently on. “I’m thinking about a career change.”

YOU DO NOT HAVE THAT MUCH OF A CAREER TO BEGIN WITH.

Dirk plows through this observation. “I think I’d like to be a detective but without any of that business with fingerprints or footprints or magnifying glasses.”

A DETECTIVE WHO DOES NOT UTILIZE CLUES.

Dirk holds up a finger. “ _Physical_ clues. If the Universe is going to insist on pointing me in directions and then giving me a good firm push, why not make some good of it? And I found a few murder weapons when I was still a kid, so technically, I _have_ solved cases.”

YOU ARE STILL A KID.

Dirk feels a little like scowling. “I _know_ everyone is a kid in comparison to you, but-“

I MEANT IN THE LITERAL SENSE, I BELIEVE YOU TO BE STILL UNDERAGE.

“Aha!” Dirk is grateful he never actually put the finger down because now he gets to point it at Death and shake it a little bit. “Wrong! I had my eighteenth birthday the other day!”

DID YOU?

“Yes, I actually missed it when it happened, but I’m trying to get used to keeping track of the days again.” It had been a bit of a shock, catching sight of a calendar and realizing that eighteen had come and gone and he'd missed it by about four days. He'd wracked his brain trying to remember what he'd done that day. It had been one of the days he had been working. He had taken his break in one of the booths, eating scrambled eggs and toast and reading a copy of Much Ado About Nothing. It hadn't been an unusual day, or even an extraordinarily pleasant one. But it had been nice. Certainly nicer than the past three birthdays he’d had. 

Dirk waves these thoughts off. "My point is, if I _can_ help, I should. I helped someone once," he adds suddenly, thinking of the little girl in the bathroom years ago. "I don't think I did much. But I think I made her feel better. Maybe that was enough. What if I can keep doing enough?"

I DO NOT KNOW. I HAVE RARELY HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO EXPERIENCE, AS YOU SO PUT IT, A CAREER CHANGE. 

"Rarely? I wouldn't think there would be any opportunity at all."

THE UNIVERSE HAS BEEN KNOWN TO BEND IN STRANGE WAYS.

They are both silent for a moment.

YOU HAVE RARELY INDICATED ANY ENJOYMENT OF THE WAY YOU HAVE BEEN BUILT. Death never refers to his intuitions as "powers" or "abilities". Dirk appreciates it. Especially that the word “psychic” hasn’t once entered into the equation. IF YOU CHOOSE THIS PATH, YOU WILL HAVE TO BE AWARE OF THAT EVERY DAY. 

"I have to be aware of it every day anyway. Maybe this way, I can be aware of it for good." He sneaks a look at Death. His expression never changes, but he feels vaguely apprehensive anyway. "What do you think?”

I CANNOT GUIDE HUMANITY. I CAN ONLY WATCH. He pauses. IT WOULD NOT BE EASY. BUT I THINK PERHAPS IT WOULD SUIT YOU. 

 

The first time the four people who appear like they’re trying very hard to seem anarchistic in nature feed on him, they catch him completely off guard when he’s about to settle into an alley to sleep for the evening. He thinks at first they’re going to rob him, but then something completely different and entirely unpleasant occurs. The only way he can think to describe it is as though he’d gotten very tired very quickly in a very electrical sort of way. Which makes very little sense, but it’s a very nonsensical sort of experience, to the degree that he keeps using the word “very” when he thinks about all of it. All Dirk knows is that he comes out of it flat on his back in the alley feeling rattled, frightened, and terrible, and that Death is peering over him.

“What just happened?” he asks when he manages to recall what words are.

I BELIEVE YOU JUST HAD A NEAR-ME EXPERIENCE.

“Ah.” He blinks the stars from his eyes. “I didn’t like that at all.”

PEOPLE RARELY DO.

Dirk sits up slowly to see a van that has _ROWDY THREE_ spray painted on the side careen off into the night.

“Do you think they knew there were four of them?” Dirk asks Death.

I AM NOT SURE. IT WOULD BE REASONABLE TO ASSUME, HOWEVER.

Dirk staggers to his feet. “They were like me, weren’t they?”

IT WOULD APPEAR SO.

“But not like me.”

NO.

Dirk’s hand slides into his pocket and clenches around the chess piece. 

“I think I’d like to avoid that happening again,” he says, as bravely as he can against the pit of fear and sickening weariness in his stomach.

He’s not sure if it’s quite an intuition or pessimism, but he knows he won’t be that lucky.

 

Dirk gets an extra job sweeping floors on weekends. He gets lost and accidentally saves the life of a man with an undershirt and a tire iron (long story), and the man turns out to be a landlord and offer him a place in his apartment building. It’s very small but it’s shelter, and he’s grateful for it.

 

 

“What do you think private detectives wear?” He asks Death while he’s taking out the trash by the diner. 

WHATEVER IS CHEAPEST UNTIL THEY HAVE THE MONEY TO AFFORD BETTER CLOTHES.

“That… is a good answer.”

 

Every two or three weeks, the Rowdy Three show up, feed on him, and trash his place. Death shows up every time.

“Do you think if I asked them nicely, they’d stop?” Dirk mumbles, grabbing the edge of the couch that is usually his bed except for the days that he falls asleep on the floor because making it to the couch is exhausting some nights even though it’s just a few steps. 

YOU TRIED ASKING THEM THE THIRD TIME. THEY DID NOT STOP.

“What about if I asked them nicely to stop destroying my apartment?”

YOU ATTEMPTED THAT LAST TIME. THEY SMASHED THE WINDOW THEY DID NOT TOUCH BEFORE.

“Ah. Yes. Well.” Dirk gingerly pats the top of his head to try and get his hair under control. “Maybe I’ll just stop asking them things.”

THAT MAY BE PRUDENT.

 

Dirk’s possessions can be gathered in a backpack. They don’t even _fill_ the backpack, which is kind of depressing. But it makes his back lighter, so it’s not terrible.

ARE YOU RUNNING AWAY?

Dirk yelps and looks around. He’s the only human at the bus stop. “Who’s even around for you to be here right now?”

Death points a skeletal finger at a window of the office building across from the stop. Dirk can’t see from here, but he’s certain there’s a dead somebody behind it.

“Ah.”

THE ROWDY THREE WILL NOT STAY BEHIND.

“That’s not why I’m going!” The silence that ensues feels a little judgmental, so he amends his statement. “That’s not _entirely_ why I’m going. I saw Riggins yesterday.”

ARE YOU SURE IT WAS HIM?

“Yes.” Riggins had been in a van and ducked his head too slow. He’d looked a little older than the last time Dirk had seen him, but he has it on reasonable authority that looking older is what happens when time passes, so he’s not surprised. “It was him. I don’t know why they haven’t brought me in yet, but I’m not giving them the chance. I’m not going back.” His fingers tighten on the backpack strap. “I’m _never_ going back. And I _know_ they’re going to follow me, but maybe they’ll lose track of me for a few days, and I’ll have a little extra time without them. So this is the smartest thing to do.” He looks at Death a little sidelong, feeling foolishly apprehensive. “You’ll, er. You’ll still be around, won’t you?”

I AM EVERYWHERE.

“Right, sure, yes. Right.” Dirk clears his throat as the bus pulls up and digs out his ticket. He and Death stand in silence while the driver checks the paper, then nods. He climbs back aboard the bus and Dirk stands there for a moment, looking up the stairs.

“I can do this,” he whispers, more for his benefit than for Death’s. He gets on the bus. When he looks out the window, the stop is empty.

 

The decade after the breakout passes with patterns. Dirk moves from city to city. He takes little jobs to little jobs, making enough money for bus ticket to bus ticket. The Rowdy Three always find him. Death is always there. He brings up to him how he’s keeping an eye out for cases occasionally, but for now “detective” has become something to attain someday in the future.

He starts picking up extra possessions. The first gift to himself he purchases is a sketchbook and a box of pencils. He becomes gifted at making very small drawings so he can make as much use of the paper as possible, and wears the pencils down to nubs. 

He continues to be pulled into strange situations. A few times he breaks into homes inadvertently. He accidentally starts a car fire. There are a couple times he has to flee from police officers, but those occasions are not strictly speaking his fault. Perhaps vaguely speaking, but _certainly_ not strictly speaking. 

 

It’s the next six years that really pick up the pace.

 

Dirk starts getting cases.

Real, actual, detectivey cases.

There’s one thing with a bottle of whiskey and a duvet cover missing a duvet. Another with a box of diamonds and a First Folio. The thing with Thor is a bit unexpected, but it comes and it goes and he only gets a broken wrist out of it negatively speaking, and positively speaking the Rowdy Three give him a wide berth during that whole case, so he gets a beautiful three weeks on his own. 

Dirk doesn’t solve all of them. Well, any of them, really. They just sort of… conclude around him. But one has to start somewhere, and this feels like a reasonable place to start.

I LIKED THE WORK WITH THE SEPTUPLETS, Death remarks as the Rowdy Three leave yet again, the ceiling fan in his current apartment in pieces. IT WAS A GOOD INTUITION.

Dirk grins a little hazily, still seeing blue lightning bolts when he blinks. “Thank you.”

 

Dirk’s not even that sure how Patrick Spring finds his number, honestly, but the amount of money is more than he could have ever imagined and he’s got a good feeling about this one. Well, maybe just a feeling. But a feeling is a feeling and an exorbitant amount of money is an _excellent_ amount of money.

“It’s not about the money, really,” he hastily assures Death when he’s walking around Seattle, Death moving by his side. “It’s about helping people.”

OF COURSE.

“The money is nice.”

I AM SURE.

“Very nice.”

I LIKE YOUR TIE.

He’d always sworn that if he became an actual detective with actual cases he’d buy himself a tie and everything. Most of what he wears is sweatpants and loose tee shirts. The places he tends to work at don’t have very much in the way of dress codes. “Thank you. I got cards, too. And some jackets, though that was maybe less work-related and more… I don’t know. Fun?” He beams, a little giddy. “I feel official. Is this what it feels like, doing what you’re _supposed_ to be doing?”

I DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE FEELING, SO I CANNOT ANSWER THAT.

“I think this is what I’m supposed to be doing. I think I’m _supposed_ to be a detective.” He bounces a little. “This will be where it all starts and everything changes.”

 

Running into himself and a giraffe man in a large coat isn’t what signifies to him that everything actually _is_ going to change. It’s unusual, but Dirk has been dealing with unusual for a very long time, so it’s usual in it’s unusualness.

The thing that stands out to him is that future him says the words _“best friend”_ when he’s talking about the giraffe man.

As Dirk runs off to the hotel room to retrieve the kitten (and he’s not really sure what the importance of a kitten is but there wasn’t a whole lot of time to question things), the gorilla mask on his face uncomfortably warm, he thinks on how this means soon he’s going to have enough friends to have one counted as _best._

 

In retrospect, climbing through the window may not have been the way to introduce himself, but if his new friend whose name Dirk does not actually know yet had arrived home maybe a minute later, he would have been through the window already and it might have gone better if he was just standing in the room rather than halfway in it.

 

DID YOU STEAL THIS CAR?

Dirk rolls his eyes, not looking up at Death. “I didn’t _steal_ it. I _found_ it, on the side of the road with the keys in it and the windows rolled down. Who leaves a car with the keys in it _and_ the windows rolled down?”

PERHAPS SOMEONE WHO WISHED TO RETURN TO IT SHORTLY.

Dirk ignores that. “If anything, I… conveniently liberated it from an owner who clearly didn’t care about it enough.”

THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME WE HAVE DISCUSSED YOUR TENDENCY TO CONVENIENTLY LIBERATE VEHICLES.

“This is not like those…” he counts quickly. “Six other times. For one thing, I have needed each and every one of those cars for Universe related reasons. For another, I have always returned them. Admittedly, not necessarily in always one piece, or maybe a little less flame resistant than before, but they _were_ returned, so those other ones weren’t liberated so much as borrowed.”

Death doesn’t breathe, but Dirk gets the feeling that he’s being sighed at, nonetheless. YOUR JACKET IS VERY BRIGHT.

Dirk adjusts the yellow leather slightly. “I like bright colors.” Colors like these are the anti-Blackwing. It’s reassuring. “Did you see how blue this car is? It’s very blue.”

He gets the sighing impression again. IT IS.

By the time the giraffe man reemerges from his apartment building, Death is gone.

 

When the Rowdy Three attack him in Todd’s apartment, Death looks over him as always.

YOU SEEM TO RESEMBLE AN ELECTRIFIED CHICKEN. 

Dirk feels like he should do something with his hair as he staggers to his feet. He used to do it often after the first few Rowdy Three attacks, but he’d given up eventually and he’s still feeling a little discombobulated at the moment.

Todd’s staring at him. Dirk’s never had anyone else present for an attack by the Rowdy Three that wasn’t them or Death. He’s not sure how much he likes the look on Todd’s face that’s accompanying this new occasion. He knows for sure that he doesn’t want to share Death’s current existence in the room with Todd (best friend or no, he hasn’t really known him that long and the whole business with Death is still something kept very close), which is why he doesn’t voice his surprise that he’s still present. It becomes clearer, of course, when Dorian shows up and then vacates his body rather quickly.

HE WAS VERY LOUD, Death observes as Todd swings his electric guitar into the wall a few times. QUITE FORTUNATE FOR YOU, THOUGH.

 

Dirk’s never had to name an animal before, so he just keeps calling it Kitten in his head. It’s sitting in his lap while he rereads _And Then There Were None._ Todd might not be speaking to him now, but they’re going to have to again at some point, so he’s not _overly_ worried about it.

That Different feeling crops up in his stomach. Dirk reads to the end of the page so he can feel comfortable earmarking it, then sits it next to him and looks up.

“Do people just die a lot in this neighborhood?” he asks curiously. “Is it particularly deathly?”

Death doesn’t answer, but scratches Kitten on the head. 

THIS IS A MUCH NICER APARTMENT THAN THE ONE THE MAN DOWNSTAIRS HAD. EVEN BEFORE IT WAS ENCOUNTERED BY THE THREE.

“I had more money than he did. Really, it’s very lucky that this landlord is yet another one of those who seems to care more about _cash_ than _proof of existence._ Well, not lucky, connected-y, but you know.” Kitten seems unfazed by the boney fingers, purring and arching up to get pet more. “I met his sister! She was _fantastic_. She gave me some food for thought on what detectives are supposed to look like. And I have a cat now!” Dirk beams. “Best case, hands down.”

THIS IS NOT A CAT.

“What do you mean, it’s not a cat?”

Death says nothing, but catches Kitten under the chin. Kitten’s purring increases.

“You know more about this case than I do, don’t you?”

THIS IS TRUE OF EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS.

“More so than usual, I mean.” 

YOUR PHONE IS VIBRATING.

Dirk blinks, then looks at the coffee table. He’s right. He quickly picks it up.

“Dirk Gently.” He’s still berating himself a little for picking up his phone earlier stating he had been awake. He’s not sure it was that subtle and it certainly wasn’t that professional.

“Hi, uh, Dirk. This is Todd. Brotzman.”

“Todd! Hello again.”

“Yeah, hi. Uh, I have something… I saw something really… weird, and you’re the only other really weird thing that I could call about it.”

Dirk looks up to grin at Death, but he’s gone.

 

Things happen very fast after that.

Dirk burns a house down, which is something to cross off the list because he’s never actually committed arson of a building before. Cars, sure, and that one park bench, but never an actual building. He meets Farah properly, and she is an _amazing_ person. There’s lots of running around, and a hostage exchange that isn’t really a hostage exchange. The Rowdy Three show up again, and so does Death. He says nothing this time, but looks thoughtfully at his new friends and disappears.

 

Dirk’s not going to think about the Riggins thing. He’s _not._

 

So he does a little bit, right after the fact. Death stands watching as he paces back and forth in a park, trying to get all of the nervous energy out, frantically turning the chess piece over in his pocket until his fingers are a little sore. They say nothing to each other, but his presence is calming nonetheless. He heads back to the Ridgely eventually.

“You okay?” Todd asks when he sees his face. Dirk hoists his biggest smile onto his face.

“Fine, great! Thought about having a smoke, but then I remembered I don’t _actually_ smoke, so it seemed unwise. I thought about it for a while, though, which is what took so much time.”

Todd clearly knows something is up, but drops it. Dirk’s grateful. He’s not really up for getting into what just happened tonight.

 

Things continue to happen quickly.

 

Todd calls him psychic. Dirk thinks of Riggins and tries not to react too violently.

 

When the cat attacks the men out in the woods, Dirk stares at Death as he retrieves Kitten.

I TOLD YOU, Death tells him simply before he disappears. He does like his last word and his dramatic vanishings.

 

Things only really slow down when they’re driving back to Seattle after finding the mystery machine. Kitten is asleep in the backseat. Dirk’s trying to drive a little more carefully so as not to disturb it. He’s _pretty_ sure Kitten likes him and that he _probably_ wouldn’t go off just because he hits a few bumps a little quickly, but now that he knows that he’s actually got a shark in the backseat he’s trying to err on the side of caution. It also seems to relax Todd a little bit.

“How did you even get your driver’s license?” Todd asks. Dirk’s lightened his grip on the wheel and has stopped checking the backseat to make sure Kitten’s still sleeping relatively unjostled every few seconds but he’s still moving slower than normal.

“I didn’t.”

“What do you do when you get pulled over?”

“I don’t very often. And they let me go pretty quickly when I do.” 

“ _Why?_ ”

“I’m blaming the CIA. Which I do for most things, but it seems very likely in this case.” He’s not sure if it’s _blame_ if the CIA is bailing him out of getting arrested for speeding, but he only just saw Riggins and is still feeling pretty rattled, so he’s not feeling particularly grateful either.

Todd’s quiet for a moment.

“That’s not the first time you’ve brought up the CIA.”

“It’s not?” He thinks about it. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Did you actually work for them?”

Dirk considers. It feels like a pretty personal subject to delve into, but Todd told him the truth about the pararibulitis, and it’s not like Dirk can tell him about seeing their future selves at the Perriman Grand. He’s not exactly sure how friendship works, but he feels like there should be a little give and take.

“ _Working for_ is a strong term,” he answers. “They _wanted_ me to work for them, certainly. It was the long game. They just had to put a little effort in first and I was not all that, ah, receptive to those efforts. Not after the first six months or so, anyway.”

“The first six months?”

“Well, I went willingly. It was only afterwards that I realized that might not have been the smartest decision I ever made. So I _tried_ for the first six months, but they were disappointing to me and I know I was disappointing to them, so eventually I stopped trying and I don’t know if they ever _really_ tried with me, so it just sort of, I don’t know, stopped.”

“You’re making less sense than usual.”

Dirk rewinds their conversation in his head and goes over it. He’s never really had anyone new take an interest in his life before. He guesses it’s not surprising that he doesn’t know how to word it properly.

“It was called Blackwing,” he starts over. Just lay out the facts as they were. “It was an operation within the CIA. It was started by a man called Colonel Riggins. It was supposed to be… it was promised as…” he struggles. “Home. It was sold to me as home. I don’t actually know that much about its… its _workings_ or _origins_ or anything. I just know that Riggins promised that people like me would be there and would explain _why_ I am… the way I am.” It’s not like Dirk to trip over his words this much. He’s not particularly enjoying this bout of struggle with articulation but it feels important to have even if he doesn’t like it.

“You mean people who are-“

“ _No._ ” The sharpness in his tone catches him by surprise. He recovers. “No. That is a word that they used and I’m not. I don’t use it. Ever. Not people who are… the p word. People who are just. Different. People like me.”

“Oh.” Todd clears his throat a little. “Sorry, then, I guess. About, you know. That word.”

“You didn’t know. Anyhow. There were scientists and doctors and labs and experiments and things. I suppose the end goal was to weaponize us somehow, but he promised that I would understand things. And it is about sixteen years later and I understand nothing, I may even understand _less,_ actually, so well done, them.”

There’s a funny sort of silence. Dirk’s pretty sure he’s put his foot in it somehow and is rewinding the conversation yet again to try and see where when Todd speaks.

“Sixteen years?”

“About that, yes. The three years I was actually _in_ Blackwing muddled up my perception of time a little, I think, made it a bit weird, so maybe not exactly, but more or less sixteen years since the breakout.”

“You and I don’t have that much of an age gap.”

“Probably not, no. Wouldn’t it be insane if we were born on the _same_ day? Seems a little unlikely even for me, though.”

“Dirk. How old were you when you went in?” 

“I was… hm. I turned eighteen about six months after I got out, and I was in there for three years, give or take, again, time, muddled, _weird_ , so on the very edge of thirteen and fourteen, I guess.”

“That’s. That can’t be legal.”

Dirk laughs. When Todd doesn’t join in, he glances at him and quickly realizes he wasn’t joking. “Oh. Er. Well. I don’t think _Blackwing_ had a whole lot to do with _legal,_ Todd.”

“And your parents were just… okay with this?”

Dirk’s hands tighten on the wheel again, tasting that familiar lurching bitterness he gets sometimes when he thinks about his parents. “I went willingly,” he repeats. “And all evidence suggests that it was willing on the part of my parents, as well.”

“Oh. So that’s just… that’s just it? Three years, stuck in a CIA base, no good… anything?”

“No. Well…” he hesitates. Just because he still doesn’t know Todd well enough to tell him _exactly_ who he’s talking about doesn’t mean he can’t _refer_ to Death. “There was one. Someone visited me. We played chess. He gave me one of the pieces. A queen. That was… good. That was very good.”

“Why’d he give you the queen?”

“Because I have the freedom to move all the way across the board.”

“Oh.”

“It’s back at the apartment. I’ll have to remember to get it before I leave. I’ve usually got it in one of my pockets, but it’s been a very busy time and I forgot.” Something occurs to him and he frowns. “Riggins better not have taken it, I’m _sure_ he went through my things and I want to keep that one.” He’s not sure what Riggins’s motivation for taking the queen might have been but it’s a thought he’s had and is therefore still kicking around and making his brain a little unpleasant.

“Wait, he’s still around?”

“He came to the Ridgely the other night with a big tall idiot to talk to me. Well, Riggins did. The idiot didn’t seem to be very much of the words type.” 

“When you kept babbling about smoking.”

“I wouldn’t call it _babbling_ so much as… calculated word projection.” Todd’s continuing to give him that funny sort of look. “They’ve been following me for sixteen years. Don’t know why they haven’t brought me in yet, because it can’t be that I’m especially good at evading them. This is just the first time they’ve reached out to talk to me. But they don’t get to take me back.”

Todd nods slowly. “I believe you.”

There’s a long quiet. Dirk waits until he thinks Todd’s fallen asleep before he speaks again.

“My name is Dirk Gently,” he whispers, checking the rearview mirror. Rearview mirrors are usually a concept he has little time for. Times are changing. “And they never get to take me back.”

In the corner of his eye, Todd shifts in his seat, but if he’s awake and heard Dirk, he gives no sign.

 

Things speed up again. 

 

An absolutely filthy woman in confusing clothing tries to kill him and when Dirk realizes she’s one of the others, it creates a strange feeling of understanding and confusion all at once. When he and Farah are driving away after she saves his life, he wonders what it means that everyone like him he’s ever met wants to hurt him. 

He doesn’t know the woman’s name.

 

Things are starting to come together in his mind and he thinks that this might be what it’s like, solving a case, not just having the knowledge that everything is connected but being able to _use_ it, to see proof in a good way.

It’s a good feeling. Dirk likes it.

 

Then they go back in time, and Dirk can feel how things are about to go Wrong, even if he can’t properly explain it to Todd. Even if he could, Todd doesn’t seem inclined to stop and listen. So he forges ahead, ignoring the ashes on his tongue, sure that everything is about to go up in flames and certain that he’s the one who lit the fire.

 

Death is there, when Kitten goes off in the hotel room. He looks around at the madness of blood and limbs strewn before them.

AH, he says, a little distastefully. THIS IS A MESSY ONE. I DON’T ENJOY THE MESSY ONES. His attention focuses on Dirk. YOU ARE NOT THE CORRECT VERSION OF YOU TO BE HERE.

_THIS IS NOT A CAT,_ Dirk thinks. He understands that there are Rules. He has understood that there are Rules all his association with Death, all his _life_ , really. It doesn’t prevent him from wanting to lash out at Death for just a moment for not talking to him or telling him anything. Just to lash out at anybody.

It’s not Death’s fault that they’re here though, and Todd’s going to be cross enough with him shortly that he shouldn’t add him seeing him start shouting at thin air to the list of Things To Be Confused With Dirk About. So he does his best to tamp down the impulse.

 

The moment on the pier with Todd is a yawning thing, somehow full and void at once. He doesn’t want to focus on it, only wants to focus on the case, but for some reason it’s something he’s carrying around with him. He grits his teeth. Forget about the agency, forget about friends. The future is uncertain from here, and he is blind as always and ever, and he’s going to solve the case and move on again.

 

“Am I going to die?” Dirk mumbles, while he’s lying on the floor of Patrick Springs’s secret room and bleeding a lot and feeling generally terrible. 

Estevez thinks he’s talking to him. “No, man, come on, don’t talk like that, you’re going to be fine.” He even attempts a smile that’s probably supposed to be reassuring.

But Dirk isn’t talking to him. He’s talking to the form that’s been hovering since not long after he got shot. He's swimming a bit, but he’s certainly there.

I DON’T KNOW, Death answers. YOU KEEP EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS.

“I can’t tell if that’s a compli- compl-“ Dirk gives up. “Don’t know if that’s good.”

Estevez looks worried. Or more worried than before, he supposes. He’s looked worried for a while now. Dirk lolls his head in his direction, than back to Death, grinning a little.

“Solved it.”

YOU DID. YOU DID A GOOD JOB.

His mouth tastes funny. “Now I know m’dying. You said a nice.”

“Dirk, come on, stay with me.”

Dirk hears the end of Estevez saying that, like someone screaming underwater. He’s going to sleep for the rest of whatever Estevez is going to say, though. He’s dying. And he solved a case. He’s allowed to take a little nap.

 

Dirk thinks someone might have been talking to him, once he wakes up in hospital. Maybe it was Death. He could ask him the next time they see each other, but he’ll probably just cite “rules” the way he does when he wants to avoid a subject. 

Dirk’ll do it anyway, probably. The principle of “can’t find the threshold of the rules if you don’t ask” still applies.

 

When Dirk comes out of the hospital and Todd is there, with clothes and awkward assurances of friendship, the brimming null feeling from the past untwists and eases. 

“Is Amanda all right?” he asks as they make their way to the diner where Farah wants to meet them.

“Yeah, I think so. She’s hanging out with the Rowdy Three now, I guess.” He side eyes Dirk. “Will she be okay, with them?”

“More than okay, I imagine.” Most of Dirk’s awareness of the Rowdy Three is terror and exhaustion. But there is a wild and free spark that he can see even through that miasma, and it’s one he can see in Amanda, too. “They won’t hurt her.”

“They hurt you.”

“I’m different. Convenient.” Dirk figured out a long time ago that there was something in particular about his fear that appealed to the Rowdy Three. That and the fact that he is incapable of not drawing attention to himself has probably made him a very easy target for them.

Todd looks like he’s considering a follow up question, but it doesn’t come. They walk in companionable silence.

 

Dirk is happy for what he thinks might be a full forty-five minutes before the Big Tall Idiot shows up and hauls him back to Blackwing. He holds that happiness close. He senses he’ll be looking back on it a lot for the foreseeable future.

 

These are the things Dirk has figured out, over the course of one week.

-Riggins isn’t in charge anymore

-Big Tall Idiot, who is named Friedkin, is

-Friedkin is an even Bigger Taller Idiot than previously assumed 

-The other prisoners are allowed to see each other, presumably to see how their abilities change due to contact with similar subjects

-Dirk misses his friends

-Dirk misses his chess piece

 

None of the scientists or guards will tell Dirk what’s happened to his friends. The possibilities make him ill when he thinks on them.

 

When the Rowdy Three feed on him for the first time since his return to Blackwing, it’s not Death that arrives, but is a very skinny young woman in dark clothing with white hair containing a single streak of black, but is Death all the same.

“And who were those gentlemen?” she asks. Her voice doesn’t knell with infinity quite the same way as the other Death’s, but there is a distinctly endless quality to it, nonetheless, as well as a disapproving one.

“The Rowdy Two.”

“There were three of them.”

Dirk hauls himself to his feet. “Yes. Normally there’s four of them, at which point they become the Rowdy Three.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It doesn’t. It also does a bit, when you think about it. Then again, it’s entirely possible I’ve thought about it too long and therefore convinced myself that it makes sense. Ask your grandfather, he’s probably got a better perspective on it.” Death doesn’t talk about his family hardly ever, but Dirk does remember the mentioning of a granddaughter a few times and there’s no one else who he thinks would carry the scythe quite so assuredly. His assumption seems to be proved right when she doesn’t contradict him, continuing to frown after the Rowdies. “He _is_ all right, isn’t he?”

“Hm, yes, just busy. I’m filling in for him.” The tightness to her mouth suggests how pleased she is about this temporary position. “What is this place?”

“This is Blackwing. Not the exact same base, not sure what happened to that one, but it’s a remarkable likeness.”

“Blackwing?”

“Prison.”

The woman’s giving him an evaluating look. It gives him the same feeling he gets sometimes when the other Death looks at him in certain situations. It’s good to have a face to go with the feeling. “You’re Dirk Gently, aren’t you?”

Dirk blinks. “Yes? How do you know my name?”

“Grandfather said I may run into you.” She adjusts her robes. “He said you have a talent for not dying despite circumstances requiring it more often than not.”

This feels like a fair assessment. “Anything else?” he asks, not expecting an answer. Rules.

“Yes. You talk very fast because you’re very lonely and want to get all the words out before people stop listening, because you have learned that eventually, people do stop listening. It’s good to stay and hear, so it can be reinforced that not everyone does. Also, you’re good when you get down to the bones of it. And my family knows bones very well.”

Dirk’s flabbergasted in a way that makes him kind of start to want crying with the joy of it. “Oh.” He clears his throat. “Were you, er. Do you think you were supposed to tell me all that?”

“No. But Grandfather showed up very suddenly and made me have to use a personal day when it came to the children I was watching, which I do _not_ enjoy doing, and I would prefer a bit of warning. So I’m sure he will persevere through someone finding out that he spoke his mind for once.” She checks her watch, which appears to be an hourglass. He wonders if that’s common for where she comes from, or part of the time motif she and her grandfather have going. She seems very put together and no nonsense, but he suspects an underlying flair for her grandfather’s dramatics in there somewhere. “There’s someone about to get stabbed in a parking lot that I need to go attend to.”

“Of course.” Dirk adjusts his shirt. The Blackwing uniforms are gray tee shirts and pants, simple and thin. “Say hello to your grandfather for me. It was nice to meet you.”

“And you.” She takes a step backwards into nothingness.

 

The bloodthirsty danger girl from before takes to sitting with him during what Blackwing refers to “assigned association time” and Dirk internally calls “playtime supervised with bullets”. The girl’s name, he finds out, is Bart, and she’s actually fairly calm when she’s not pointing a gun at anyone.

“I killed someone with a dirk once,” she tells him. “Not very gently, though.”

“I think it’s probably hard to stab someone gently.”

She grins at him. It’s not a happy grin by any means, and yet Dirk doesn’t find himself frightened by it. “You’d be surprised.”

 

Something Dirk never properly valued when he was in Blackwing the first time around was the ability to mouth off.

When he was fourteen and got irritated and snapped at people in authority, he would get something muttered about the attitudes of teenagers and sent back to his cell. He is, however, no longer fourteen, and when he tells Friedkin that he’s seen suits better tailored on Macy’s mannequins and that he’s using enough hairgel that the base is at serious risk of burning down, he gets punched in the face twice for it. He thinks about adding that he would know the quantity of hairgel required to burn things down, seeing as that was how one of the cars he accidentally set fire to went up, but his jaw hurts and by the time it occurs to him he’s been escorted back to his cell anyway. He sits heavily on his bed, staring into space.

He feels the bed dip next to him, and is surprised when he looks to his right.

“It’s not actually possible for Friedkin to have hit me hard enough that I’m about to _die_ , is it?” he asks, bewildered. Of all the ways to go, that might be his least favorite option. He might have rather died in Patrick Springs’s secret room rather than die by _Friedkin’s_ hands. Even if it is looking increasingly likely that his death will be because of him, one way or the other.

NO. THIS IS WHAT YOU MAY REFER TO AS A… PERSONAL CALL.

Dirk’s taken aback. “Oh. Um. Thank you.”

YES. WELL. 

Death seems uncomfortable so Dirk changes the subject.

“I met your granddaughter.”

SHE MENTIONED.

“She seemed… brisk.”

YES. SHE DOES THAT.

“Does she have a name? I don’t want to be rude if I see her again.”

SUSAN. SHE HAS BEEN CALLED SUSAN DEATH BEFORE, BUT SHE DOES NOT ENJOY IT. I WOULD ADVISE AGAINST REFERRING TO HER AS SUCH.

“That’s good to know. Thank you.” Dirk pokes at his face and winces.

WHY HAVE YOU BEEN INJURED?

“Well. I’m not sure if you noticed this, but I’m a bit resistant to authority, at times.”

IT HAS BEEN OBSERVED.

“Then there you have it.”

Death is quiet.

I TOOK THE LIBERTY OF CHECKING IN ON THE SOUL THAT USED TO RESIDE IN THE ANIMAL THAT YOU NAMED KITTEN.

“You did? Why?”

CATS ARE NICE.

“Ah.”

YOU MAY BE HAPPY TO KNOW THAT IT IS THRIVING IN THE OCEAN.

“That’s good. I’m glad something’s happy.”

I ALSO TOOK THE CHANCE TO VISIT KITTEN TO SEE HOW HE WAS DOING.

“Yes?”

HE IS BEING TAKEN CARE OF WELL BY SOMEONE WHO HAS SEEN HIM IN ACTION.

Dirk frowns, trying to think of who else might have witnessed Kitten’s murdery streak. Everyone who would have is dead. The only people to see what Kitten can do is Todd and himself.

_Todd._

Dirk’s brain connects the dots quickly. There are Rules. Death cannot interfere and there are some truths he cannot tell. But he can observe. He maybe can’t tell Dirk explicitly whether or not his friends are alive, but he can tell him if Kitten is being looked after. Some Rules can be circumvented.

He doesn’t know about Farah or about Amanda. There might not be a way around that one. But Todd is well enough that he can look after Kitten. That means he’s alive. That’s _something._

Dirk does his best to suppress his grin and looks away from Death. When he's reasonably certain he’s done a satisfactory job, he turns back.

“Thank you,” he says, as honestly and seriously as he can. “For telling me that Kitten is all right.”

IT IS MY PLEASURE. CATS ARE NICE.

They sit quietly for a while, Dirk feeling a bit like a balloon’s swollen inside of him. It’s the first good feeling he’s had since he arrived.

 

“So when did your shit start?”

Dirk doesn’t raise his head from where it’s leaning against the wall, but he does tilt it so he’s looking at Bart. She’s pulling absently at the hem of her shirt. She, like Dirk, is a definite fiddler with her fingers. 

“What shit?”

“Y’know, your shit.” She gestures emphatically around them. “ _This_ shit.”

“Oh. Always.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I can’t remember a time that this _wasn’t_ happening. You?”

“About eleven, I guess. People just started, y’know, dyin’ around me. Took me a while to figure out I was the connectin’ factor, but I got there. Eventually.”

“That can’t have been easy.” Dirk had always been unnerved by being what he is, even though he’d grown up with it. He can’t imagine being perfectly regular until that age and then suddenly accidentally killing people.

“Yeah, it was scary. I mean, I’m fine with it now.” And she is. When Bart refers to what she does, she does so with an absolute tranquility and acceptance that Dirk envies. “But it was a long transition time. Actually took coming here for me to get there, so I guess I owe them somethin’. Not gonna tell _them_ that, but hey.”

“Was your…” he hesitates, but he’s already started the sentence and the look in her eyes suggests that he’s not going to get away with changing the subject, so he plows on. “Was your family accepting?”

“Never told ‘em.”

“Really? They never noticed?”

“I dunno if they ever _noticed._ But I never _told_ ‘em. My parents loved me. Like, a lot. Didn’t know if that’d hold if I told them I was killin’ people.”

“That wasn’t a worry I had.”

“Killin’ people?”

“Losing the affection of my parents.”

“Huh. What happened to yours?”

Dirk shrugs. “I saw them last before I came here. I don’t know what they did with themselves after they let me go. You?”

“Dead.” The twisting of the hem of her shirt stops abruptly. “Fire. My fault.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Thing is, I never killed the wrong person. Not once. Not ever. So, I remember that they loved me. Did they actually, though? Were they just bad people pretendin’?”

Bart’s got an unusually sorrowful look on her face. Dirk thinks on it.

“They couldn’t have been bad people _and_ loved you?” is what he comes up with. He winces a little after he says it. He’s not sure it’s the right answer. But Bart’s looking at him like he’s shown her the Sun for the first time.

“Huh,” she says again, finally. “Yeah, I guess.”

She seems to find a modicum of comfort in it. It’s not a lot, he thinks, but it’s enough.

 

Dirk’s body aches from physical trials. He hasn’t slept in twenty-four hours. They took some blood earlier. They’re not feeding him enough. He feels pulled very far and very thin.

Death sits next to him in his cell as he grits his teeth against the tears he can feel coming.

“I’m not sure I want to have the freedom to move across the board,” he manages to get out. “I think I’d rather be a pawn at this point.”

Death considers it.

EVERY CHESS PIECE IS IMPORTANT. THE PAWN TO THE KING. BUT I HAVE BEEN HERE ALWAYS, AND I HAVE SEEN ALL OF THE FREER PIECES. AND I CAN TELL YOU THAT MANY OF THEM HAVE ALL, AT ONE POINT OR ANOTHER, HAD THE SAME WISH YOU DO.

“That doesn't make it easier.”

NO. BUT KNOW THAT YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

Dirk shakes apart. Death doesn’t leave.

 

“So when you got here was when you embraced your… I don’t know, your _destiny_ ,” Dirk muses. Sitting against the wall with Bart is probably his most calming activity. “What did you do in between here and the fire? _Was_ there an in between here and the fire?”

“Riggins found me on the street. I bolted after the fire. It was a bad year.”

“I’ve had a few of those. The kind with no good memories, right?” It reminds him a little of the conversation he had with Todd after finding Patrick Springs’s machine. Parallels are everywhere.

“Sort of. I’ve got one-“ she holds up her finger. “That doesn’t suck. Not sure if it’s good, but it doesn’t suck.”

“I’ve got one of those from during Blackwing, too! Well, it’s good. But it also doesn’t suck.”

She shakes her head. “Nope. From before Blackwing. I was, uh…” she thinks about it. “I was just losing my mind all the time, y’know? But I still had to go to school and take the bus and do human being shit. And at one point when I was at school, I just freaked out, during one of the lunch periods. So I went into the bathroom and hid under one of the sinks. And this kid came in and found me. I mean, he was older than me by a couple years, but we were both kids, so. Didn’t say much. Just sat with me.”

Dirk is distant and electric all at once as he stares at her. He’s not seeing her as she is now, not really. He’s seeing a little girl, face wet with red rimmed eyes, looking up at him before she hugs him.

“It was the boy’s bathroom,” he hears himself say, like from a long way off. Bart looks at him in surprise.

“Yeah,” she answers. “It-“

“Was the first room you could find,” he completes. 

They gaze at each other for a moment, Dirk sure the realization in her eyes mirroring the same in his.

“Everything is connected,” they whisper as one.

“You were very skinny.”

Bart shrugs. “I couldn’t help it. I ate all the time but my body just processed it weird, I guess. You were shorter.”

“I didn’t hit my growth spurt until I came here.”

Both look at the wall in front of them.

“That made me feel better,” she says abruptly. “Didn’t think you could get what I was dealin’ with, but there was just someone who sat with me. Didn’t ask a whole lot of questions. It was nice.”

Dirk raps his fingers on his knee a little.

“That was the moment I thought maybe I could do something with this,” he tells her. “I might not have been normal, but I could be helpful. Well, maybe not normal. Normal-“

“Is a human construct,” they say, together again. There’s that moment again, where everything seems to stop and start all at once when the penny drops again and they look at each other.

“You’re the other one,” they whisper. She hits him in the arm. It’s not a hard hit or one intended to actually hurt him, he thinks, just one of surprise.

“You’re the other one who can see the Big Guy.” Bart sounds awed. “He said there was another one, but-“

“Rules,” they agree. 

“I’m not sure it’s that…” he thinks about how to phrase it. “I think we can all _see_ him. I just think that maybe we’re the only ones that _talk_ to him.” He’s seen the Rowdy Three’s eyes flicker oddly when they’ve fed on him and when Death shows up, like they’re seeing something they won’t acknowledge. 

“Why wouldn’t you talk to him?” Bart’s brow furrows. “Seems rude.”

Dirk shrugs. “You kill people. Your measure of rude might be different to theirs.”

“Only people who have it comin’.” She hesitates. “Did, uh. Did my parents? Have it comin’?”

Dirk opens his mouth. Closes it again.

“I think,” he answers carefully. “That if you remember them loving you, then they did. And that’s what you should hold onto.”

“So they did, but you’re worried you’re gonna make me sad or somethin’ if you say so.”

He gives up. “Yes.”

“Okay. Thanks for caring enough to try and lie.” She kicks her legs out from her crosslegged position. “This is too many revelations for one day. Tell me about one of your cases.”

“You were there for the big one.” He considers. “I could tell you about the time I set a park bench on fire. I set _lots_ of things on fire. I swear I’m not doing it on _purpose_ , exactly.”

She grins. It’s not the usual kind he sees from her that crops up when they’re talking about people she’s killed. It’s a bright one, the sort one might see on someone outside of the base. “Sounds like fun.”

 

It’s about a week after that when the Rowdy Three approach him and Bart. Dirk flinches instinctively. Bart sits a little straighter, glaring daggers at them.

“What do you fuckin’ want?” she asks.

The Three don’t stand over him, but sit across from him.

“We want a truce,” Martin answers. Dirk narrows his eyes.

“I’ve proposed a truce before,” he says tartly. “If I recall, you found it amusing.”

“Yeah, well, now we’re the ones suggesting it,” Gripps points out.

“Forgive me for my initial reaction not being one of _trust._ ” Dirk folds his arms. “You’ve tormented me for sixteen years. Why should I believe you?”

“Cause now we’re all stuck here.” Cross folds his arms right back at him. “And we all want out. And we shouldn’t be pointed at each other when we could be pointed at them.”

“I’ve _never_ been pointed at you. You’ve been pointed at _me_ , always _._ ” He thinks about it. “I know you’ve got to keep feeding on me, I’m not _stupid_ , I’ve noticed things. How does this truce you’re suggesting work?” 

“We can make it less…” Martin flutters his hand around his head and pulls a face. Bart looks confused but Dirk understands completely. 

“And why weren’t you doing this before?”

“Lots of reasons.”

“Would those reasons be that you’re all _assholes?_ ”

Martin looks a little guilty. It’s an expression Dirk’s not that familiar with on him. It’s a little unsettling. Like a clown nose on a Chihuahua. “More or less.”

Dirk grits his teeth. Martin notices.

“Look. We ain’t done right by you. And I’m not going to pretend that we’re willing to start for entirely altruistic kind of reasons.”

“So I should take what I can get and be grateful?”

Martin rubs his forehead. “That’s not… what I’m saying.”

“Go away,” Bart commands. “Dirk and I are gonna talk.”

They obey immediately. They've instantly respected Bart in a way they never did Dirk. Probably because she kills people, which makes sense, but it’s still a little irritating.

“So, they’re assholes,” Bart says without preamble. “And they’ve been assholes for sixteen years. But they’re offering to stop being assholes.”

“Because-“

“Look. I seen a _lot_ of guys sorry for what they’ve done and _not_ sorry for what they’ve done. And they’re not really either, but, y’know, they’re closer to the first one than the second one. And they want to not only stop treating you like shit, but to stop treating you like shit so we can get out of here.”

“I just.” Dirk hunches in on himself a little. “I’d rather it was on my own terms.”

“I’d rather not be in Blackwing. And maybe have a blueberry muffin. Universe is what the Universe is, Dirk. You gotta take what it hands you and use it.”

Dirk nods slowly. He motions to the Rowdy Three, who rejoin him.

“I want you to feed on me less and I want it to be done in the less painful way _including_ after we get out,” he says flatly. “And I want you to stop trashing my apartments, _as well as_ place of work, if I can swing the detective agency when we’re out. Or Todd’s apartment. Don’t fuck with anyone I care about.”

The Rowdies look at each other, nod as one, and then nod again when they look at Dirk.

“Okay.” Dirk clears his throat, feeling a little unsteady but also vaguely satisfied. “Okay. We have an arrangement.”

 

When they feed on him for the first time since the arrangement, Bart’s sitting next to him. He’s not really sure what to expect and is trying very hard not to be nervous. It must show on his face how much he’s failing, because Martin looks at him over his glasses.

“Drummer girl went through the same thing. You’re going to be fine.”

“We are nowhere _near_ a point where any words of comfort from you are going to mean anything to me.”

Martin pulls a face that Dirk reads as _fair enough._ Bart slides her hand into Dirk’s and squeezes.

“Relax,” she says, leaning in a little. “If it’s a trick, I’ll kill them.” 

That, oddly enough, does have a sort of comfort to it. None of them question how Bart would do it despite having no weapons. She could do it. Dirk’s got faith.

The Rowdy Three stand over him. Dirk closes his eyes and tightens his grip on Bart.

Dirk’s never been adequately able to explain what it feels like when the Rowdy Three feed, even to himself. It stands to reason that he can’t properly explain what this feels like, either. The words “calmer”, “easier”, and “better” spring to mind, however. Like he’s a boat confidently rolling with the wave, instead of caught up in it while clutching a piece of driftwood.

He opens his eyes. Death is still there, watching.

“Do you always show up when they do this?” Bart asks him. “And _you_ three kept doin’ it? Whoa, you guys _are_ assholes.”

The Rowdy Three shuffle, actually looking a little uncomfortable. Death’s head tilts a little, presumably at the sight of both Bart and Dirk looking at him.

AH.

“We had a talk,” Dirk says, a little cheerily. He can’t believe he feels something remotely cheery after an encounter with the Rowdy Three. The Universe is stranger than he thought.

I SEE. I COULD NOT LET EITHER OF YOU KNOW OF THE OTHER’S EXISTENCE. THERE ARE-

“Rules,” the five of them chorus. “We know.”

Bart and Dirk look at the Rowdy Three in surprise. They shuffle again.

“Vogel talked to him sometimes,” Martin mutters. He glances at Death. “Part of those rules would be that you can’t tell us if the little one’s all right, wouldn’t they?”

Death is silent. Martin swallows and looks away from him. Dirk thinks quickly.

“You said Kitten’s being well cared for,” he comes up with.

I DID.

“Do you happen to know by how many owners? I just wanted to make sure he’s not being spoiled, what it’s going to be like taking care of him once we’re out, that sort of thing.”

Death is quiet again while Bart and the Rowdies stare at Dirk like he’s crazy.

FIVE, he says finally. TWO YOUNG LADIES AND THREE MEN. PLEASE TAKE IT INTO ACCOUNT IF YOU RETURN TO HIM AND SHOULD LIKE TO KEEP IN MIND HIS FEEDING SCHEDULE. IT WOULD NO DOUBT BE DIFFERENT IN THE HANDS OF FIVE THAN IN THE HANDS OF ONE.

Dirk grins. “Thank you.”

YOU ARE WELCOME. Death vanishes.

“It’s how he got around telling me Todd was okay. You-“ he points at Bart. “Already told me you got Ken away and _you-_ “ the Rowdy Three now. “Are only missing Vogel. That’s three men, Todd included. Amanda and Farah are the women in the equation. That’s all our people. Everyone’s okay.”

Bart lets out one of her barking laughs, burying her grin in Dirk’s shoulder. Bart, he’s found, is pretty tactile when she has the chance. The Rowdy Three are staring at him. Dirk suddenly feels awkward under their scrutiny.

“I still don’t like any of you,” he informs them. “But I didn’t enjoy worrying about Todd. You shouldn’t have to worry about Vogel.”

Martin points at Dirk and he expects for half a second that he might be struck down somehow, possibly with a lightning bolt. Instead what happens is Martin nods and says “thank you.”

Dirk nods uncomfortably back. “Sure.”

Gripps and Cross clap him on the shoulder before they all walk away. 

“Was that… what was that?”

Bart shrugs, still grinning at nothing in particular. “Think it was maybe somethin’ not sucking.”

Dirk considers that. He guesses she’s right. He’ll take what he can get.

 

The five of them plan for a month. Dirk figures out where the blind spots in the security cameras are under the guise of weaving back and forth and waving at them cheerfully. All the authority figures in Blackwing think he’s weird enough anyway, so they just discount it as part of his strangeness. Bart pins down the schedules of the guards. The Rowdy Three find out where one of the side doors marked PERSONNEL ONLY goes, a small hall connecting to a corridor that should lead to weapons rooms. 

Dirk’s not sure he’ll ever really be friends with the Rowdy Three. He’s not even sure that he entirely trusts them. It’s been a long sixteen years. But they’re surprisingly efficient, and just as determined to get out. They’re something else, too. _Contrite_ isn’t quite the word he’s looking for. Perhaps _vaguely apologetic._

Bart, however, will be a different story.

“You’re going to need to get a phone, you know,” he tells her the day before their planned breakout attempt. 

“Why?” Bart’s taken to braiding and unbraiding her hair over and over again to keep her hands busy. They’d allowed her a ball to throw at the wall and catch repeatedly, but then a guard had pissed her off and she’d gotten him in the throat with it, so it had been taken away from her.

“I doubt the Universe is going to let us stay together and, well.” He shrugs. He’s still figuring out how to properly express emotion and sentiment. “I’d like to keep talking to you.”

“Huh. Maybe Ken and I’ll get one together. I don’t really get phones. Or the Internet. He probably does, though.”

Dirk nods sympathetically. “I only ever bought a phone for cases, I never bought a computer. Too expensive.”

“We’ll come back together in the end, though.” She starts unraveling the braid she’d been working on. “Found each other after that first time, didn’t we?”

“Try not to shoot at me the next time around.”

Her fingers get stuck in a tangle. “No promises.”

 

The Rowdy Three cause a riot in the eating room and Bart and Dirk sneak off through the side door. The corridors are dimly lit.

“I miss my magic lightbulb,” Dirk tells Bart. “That would make things easier.”

“I miss guns. Let’s go find some.”

The first room they come across marked _STORAGE_ is unlocked. It’s full of plastic bins labeled with the codenames of projects. Personal affects. Bart starts rifling through them looking for guns. Dirk spots the bin classified _ICARUS_ and yanks it open. It contains his yellow jacket, Todd’s Mexican Funeral shirt, his pants, and his phone. He tugs his Blackwing mandated shirt off and the Mexican Funeral shirt on. The jacket is next. The pants are less important. He thinks he might actually be able to run and move better in the Blackwing ones than the jeans.

“I feel _loads_ better,” he tells Bart brightly as she straightens. She’s found multiple guns and holsters and managed to attach all of them to herself. She’s also holding a knife.

“Me, too. You know how to use a gun?”

“You point and you shoot?”

She shakes her head and opens up a closet labeled _INCUBUS._ The closet is packed full of things like crowbars, baseball bats, and a few sledgehammers. The Rowdy Three had evidently been well stocked. She throws him a crowbar.

“This work better for you?”

Dirk swings experimentally. “I’ve never used one before, but I suppose every experience is a learning one.”

“Good.” She picks out three of the blunt force objects and scoops the Rowdy Three’s leather jackets in her arms. “Let’s get going.”

They’re about halfway to the rendezvous point to meet with the Rowdy Three when an alarm blares.

“Shit,” the two of them mutter. They run to the meeting place, where the Three are waiting.

“I thought you said you could get out without tripping the alarms,” Dirk says as Bart chucks them each a weapon.

“Wasn’t us.” Cross swings the sledgehammer over his shoulder easily. “Someone else set them off.”

“How’d it go in there?” Bart checks her gun.

Gripps grins. “Don’t think the guards were equipped for an actual riot. They’ll break their ranks soon.”

“Good.” Dirk tightens his grip on his crowbar. “Let’s go find a door that leads out.”

The five of them dash through the halls, the Rowdy Three tugging on their jackets as they go. They’re not _entirely_ sure which direction they’re going, Dirk thinks, but he has faith they’ll find a way out. Everywhere they go, they hear the sound of shouting growing. He thinks it’s the prisoners, their yells bouncing off the halls as they too search for freedom.

They skid to a stop when they see a cluster of guards advancing on something they can’t see. Bart raises her gun and fires off all the bullets in it. The guards drop to reveal Ken, holding a giant plumber’s wrench and looking fairly startled. Bart drops the gun and flies at him. Ken catches her in the hug, grinning. When she pulls back, she punches him in the arm.

“ _Ow_ , what was that for?”

“What the hell are you doing here, you stupid idiot?”

Ken raises his eyebrows. “We’re rescuing you. This is a rescue. What are _you_ doing here?”

“Rescuing ourselves.”

“ _We?_ ” Martin asks.

“Me, Farah, Amanda, Vogel, and Todd.”

Dirk’s flooded with warmth. “Really?”

“Yeah. We got separated trying to look for you.”

A guard comes charging out of nowhere. Bart grabs the gun she dropped and hurls it at the guard. It strikes him in the head and he goes down.

“Let’s go find our people.”

Dirk glances at Death, who’s been watching the whole scene.

DON’T STOP ON MY ACCOUNT. I AM CONFIDENT THAT MY PRESENCE IS GOING TO CONTINUE TO BE REQUIRED HERE.

 

The six of them dash down the corridor in the direction Ken’s indicated. Dirk turns a corner sharply and runs, quite literally, into someone. Both of them let out what could probably be considered a yelp and hit the floor. Dirk sits up, gingerly rubbing one of his elbows. He went down hardest on those.

“These are really hard floors,” a familiar voice mumbles. Dirk blinks the stars from his eyes to see Todd carefully stretching his shoulder, a large section of pipe by his hands. 

“Todd!”

Todd stares at Dirk. “Did you… actually just run into me?”

“I think it’s more likely that _you_ ran into _me_ but it’s essentially the same thing, so… yes?”

Todd staggers to his feet and holds a hand out to Dirk. He lets Todd help haul him up. 

“We thought you’d be in cells or something.”

“Oh, we normally are. I think we’re breaking out the same time you’re breaking in.”

“Oh. That’s… I don’t know if that’s convenient or not.”

“Yeah, I can’t tell either.” He beams at Todd. “Thank you for coming to get me.”

Todd looks baffled. “Did you think we were going to leave you?” 

“I don’t have a lot of experience with people or friends, I’m not quite sure what the rules are supposed to be in this situation, not to mention that as far as situations go, I don’t think this is a normal one.” 

Todd’s giving him one of those funny looks that Dirk doesn’t really like. “We were always going to come get you,” he says, clearly and firmly. “It just took a while to find you.”

Dirk swallows a smile, trying to play it cool. “That’s some, some good information to have. It’s good to have all the information, you know, to reach conclusions about cases, good, er, good practice.” He’s pretty sure he nailed the cool. Very casual. “Did you all come with things you’d find in a basement and not actual weapons?”

Todd picks up his length of pipe. “Farah’s the one with the guns, we’re not allowed to have any because of how terrible we are with them.” 

“Where _are_ Farah and-“

A gunshot sounds and they all jump. Bart draws a gun but Amanda shows up out of nowhere and takes the oncoming guard out at the knees with a baseball bat, Vogel hot on her trail. He lets out a whoop and he and the Rowdy Three collide in what Dirk thinks may be a group hug but could also just be mutual hitting, it’s hard to tell.

Amanda grins widely. “Hi, Dirk!”

“Hiya, Amanda!” 

Amanda gives him a quick but cheerful hug. “Dude, shit is getting _crazy_ , the guards are losing control _so fast_ , it’s _amazing._ ”

Martin grabs her arm and she gets happily tugged into the Rowdy Three reunion. Dirk looks at Bart.

“If they’re losing control-“

“They’re gonna send in reinforcements,” Bart continues.

“And it’s going to be harder to get out,” they say in unison. Ken and Todd give them appraising looks.

“You two do that often?” Ken asks. They shrug. Bart leans over to the Rowdy Three huddle, stands on her tiptoes, and manages to catch Martin in the forehead with a forceful poke. They all still.

“Yeah?”

“Hug later. We gotta go.” She turns to Todd. “Where’s the girl with all the guns?”

“She’s-“

Farah shoots down the hall from behind them. “We gotta move!” she yells. “We gotta move, come on, I know the way!”

“What happened?” Todd asks when she’s close enough.

“I punched the wrong guy, come on, we gotta get out of here!”

They all bolt, blasting through door after door.

“You’re sure you know the way?” Gripps asks as Farah takes a hard right.

“I studied the map Riggins gave us, I’d like to think _that I know what I’m doing._ ”

“Riggins?” Dirk asks, stomach hitching. Todd waves a hand.

“I’ll explain when we’re in the van!”

They burst through a final set of doors. Dirk squints at the sudden bright sunlight. Farah leads them towards a large black van. Amanda hauls one of the doors open and gestures. They all clamber in. Farah jumps in the driver’s seat. Ken moves to close the door but Bart gestures for him to stop. She grabs the very edge of the inside of the car roof and leans out the opening as Farah starts driving off. Dirk does the same to see guards chasing them. Bart shoots off all the bullets once more. The guards collapse and Bart drops the gun, leaving it to tumble and rapidly be gone as the car moves away from it. The two of them watch the base get smaller in the distance, seeing people leak out of it towards vehicles.

“Do you think they’ll be okay?” Dirk asks over the rush of the air around them, unsure if Bart’ll be able to hear. Evidently she can, because she shrugs as best she can while still holding onto the car.

“I dunno. Hopefully we won’t see them again. Might mean we’d end up back here again.” She looks up and over her shoulder at him with a grin. “We’re out now, though.”

He grins back down at her. “We are.”

He becomes aware that someone’s hitting him in the leg. He looks down to see Todd, who stops hitting his leg once he’s got his attention and jerks his thumb back into the van. Dirk gives him a thumbs-up and looks at Bart.

“We should go back inside. It’s been brought to my attention that we’re in a precarious position.”

Bart nods and they duck back into the van, sitting down heavily as Todd hauls the door shut. Dirk props himself up against the inside of the van next to him. Bart leans into Ken, who absently puts an arm around her shoulders as he talks with Amanda, whose legs are stretched across Martin, Cross, and Gripps’s laps while reclining against Vogel, in a low voice.

“Did they let you wear your jackets and stuff inside the base?” Todd asks. Dirk glances down, remembering what he’s wearing.

“No, we found a storage room and it had our things in them.”

“Why isn’t Bart wearing any of her clothes from before?”

“Clothes are trappings,” Bart mumbles sleepily. Her eyes are closed but evidently she’s still awake enough to answer the question. “Irrelevant. Don’t need to change ‘em.”

Dirk points at her with a little nod that hopefully conveys _well, there you go_. “I didn’t get shot in my shirt!”

“What?”

“You asked me not to get shot in it when you gave it to me. And I didn’t.”

Todd looks like he’s suppressing one of the Funny Looks. “You’ve been held against your will in a top-secret base in Middle of Nowhere, Washington for two months. It would have been okay to be injured in the shirt.”

Dirk shrugs. “I don’t really see the correlation. Why is Riggins involved in this?”

“He came to us about a month ago with a map of the base and coordinates saying he wanted to try and fix things.”

“He can’t.”

They look across the van to Martin. He’s got an inscrutable look on his face and appears a little more intimidating now that he’s back in his jacket. 

“No fixing this.”

Dirk turns to Todd. “Did he _really_ do this with no ulterior motive?” He feels justified in his doubts, but if they trust him, then, well. _He_ won’t trust him, necessarily, but he’ll trust his friends and that’ll be enough.

“As far as we could tell, yeah. He gave us the map and the location, didn’t ask anything in return. Told us what the base should be equipped with as far as security. Said when we’d left to get you guys he’d leave to feel out what the attitude was going to be with the CIA and when we’d be able to come back from where we were hiding and let us know when we were in the clear.”

“And there’s no chance that there’ll just be people waiting to take us back in when we get back?”

Todd points behind him as Farah calls over her shoulder from the driver’s seat.

“Too much work to bring us in when all they had to do was have Riggins gain our trust with the coordinates and map and then get us when he was with us.”

Todd puts his hand back in his lap. “I asked the same question, she gave that same answer.”

Dirk returns his attention to Martin. “He can’t fix what happened to us, especially since he caused it. But he got us out. That counts for something.”

Martin grunts and returns to talking with the Rowdy Three and Amanda, who’s no longer in the midst of a conversation with Ken but is listening intently to something Cross is saying.

“So are you guys… okay now?” 

Dirk shrugs. “We’re not _not_ okay. We’re the sort of not not okay where they’re not going to keep breaking my stuff and terrorizing me.”

A smile tugs at the edges of Todd’s mouth. “You know it was my stuff they broke last time, right?”

Dirk scoffs. “Please, I have _sixteen years_ worth of apartments being destroyed by them, you are just a _drop_ in that particular bucket.”

Todd does grin properly then, though he looks away like he thinks that might hide it. Dirk grins a little, too, leaning his head back against the wall of the van with a quiet _thunk_. 

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Todd starts digging around in his pockets. “We went into your apartment to see if there was anything that could help us get into Blackwing and I saw this and remembered you talking about it and thought you might like it back.” He finds what he’s looking for and holds out a hand to Dirk.

The queen rests there, the same as ever.

Dirk feels the smile on his face curve into something a little gentler. He picks the piece up and lets it stay in his palm for a moment, feeling the familiar weight.

“Hello again,” he says softly. 

“That’s a really weird kind of marble.”

Dirk knows what Todd means. The piece has always seemed to suck up all the darkness around it, leaving it with a faint glow. “I’m not surprised. It comes from a totally different place than here.”

“Let me guess. England again?”

“I’m actually not sure where. But certainly nowhere like Earth.” Dirk carefully tucks the piece into one of his jacket pockets. “Possibly even Nowhere, with a capital N.”

“…okay. Sure.” 

Dirk settles back against the van again, surrounded by friends and feeling content.

 

When the car stops about an hour and a half later, Dirk is jerked awake. They tumble out of the van to see a small house designed to look like a cabin but not _actually_ a cabin because it’s too big. 

“This is our headquarters for now,” Farah says, standing next to him. “It’s well stocked with food and there’s a small town about forty-five minutes away if we need any supplies. We’re to stay here until Riggins gives us the all-clear.” She turns to Dirk and hugs him. It’s a little unexpected but he’s not one to turn down a hug so he warmly reciprocates. 

She pulls back and gives him a little smile. “Good to have you back.”

“Thank you.”

They head into the cabin, which apparently has approximately two bedrooms and two couches.

“Some of us are going to have to sleep on the floor,” Farah says musingly.

“I can do it,” Dirk pipes up cheerfully. “I slept in alleys for a year or so after breaking out and Blackwing beds are _terrible_ , floors will be a walk in the park.”

Farah stares at him.

“Dirk gets a couch or a bed or something,” she says finally. “We’ll figure the rest of it out as we go.”

 

Dirk vacillates between being _definitely_ a morning person and definitely _not_ a morning person. On the third morning he’s out of Blackwing, he definitely is, and before the sun comes up. He rises from his couch, tiptoeing around people still asleep on the floor, and opens the cabin door as quietly as he can. When he turns around after closing it, he sees Amanda sitting against the cabin, still in the gray sweatpants, Wonder Woman tank top, and blue cardigan sweater she’s taken to wearing to sleep, a cigarette between her fingers.

“Hey. Couldn’t sleep?”

“My sleep schedule tends to be confused on how it wants to operate.”

“Yeah, I feel you on that one.” 

“Can I sit with you?”

She pats the ground next to her and he joins her.

“You want one?” she asks, holding up her cigarette. Dirk shakes his head.

“I don’t smoke. But thank you.”

“No problem.”

They’re quiet for a moment.

“So what precisely is going on with you and Todd?” From what he’s observed they’re nothing like the dynamic he’d observed when he’d met them, but they don’t seem to be angry or violent with each other.

“He’s my brother and I love him.” She takes a long drag of her cigarette and then blows out. “But he’s also an asshole. But he’s also trying hard to not be. So it’s pretty complicated.”

Dirk nods thoughtfully. “Good to know.”

More quiet.

Amanda turns to him in a sudden bright spark of movement. “Hey, so why do you talk to the Reaper Man?”

Dirk feels a little like choking even though he’s not drinking or eating anything, his entire body suddenly warm with nervousness. “Pardon?”

“Y’know, the Reaper Man. He shows up every time the Rowdy Three feed on you, right? And you all can see him just like, all the time?”

“I, erm, I, I, I don’t really know what you’re-“

Amanda gives him a “no bullshit” kind of a look. “I see him when they take my pain away and Vogel told me about him. I know you can see him and Vogel says he’s seen you talking to him.”

Dirk feels himself wavering. “Have you told anyone?”

“Nope. That’s a pretty big one, dude, I’m not gonna be like ‘hey, some of our friends can see the guy who comes to collect when you’re dead, pass the salt’. I don’t think that would be cool.”

Dirk gives in. “I don’t call him the Reaper Man,” he tells her. “He told me his name was Death, so I call him by his name.”

“Vogel never asked, I guess.”

“So you can see him too, when the Rowdy Three-“ he gestures wildly. Amanda gets it.

“Yup. Big skeleton guy with a scythe is pretty hard to forget.”

“That’s true.”

“So? Why do you talk to him?” Amanda’s eyes gleam. “Is it a bargain for your soul?”

“Do you remember when we met, and Todd said you shouldn’t talk to me, and you were confused that you shouldn’t be allowed to say hello?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s like that. I didn’t want to be rude when I saw him. And I was curious, of course. And after that, I didn’t really have anyone else to talk to, you know, it was basically just him for sixteen years. He’s always polite. Kind, sometimes. A little lonely. He cares about me, although I wasn’t told that until a couple months ago.” Dirk stops and considers something for the first time. “Oh,” he says faintly. “I think Death might be my friend.”

She grins. “Oh man, you’re talking like teenage Todd. He totally went through this emo phase when he was fourteen, before he hit his grunge phase, and he _absolutely_ said shit like that.” 

“Good?” 

“You have no idea what emo is, do you?”

“Or grunge. The last one sounds filthy, though.”

“You know, you can just _tell_ us when you don’t know what we’re talking about.”

Dirk fidgets uncomfortably. “I want you all to like me,” he confesses. “I’ve never had friends plural before. I don’t know how this works or what the rules are.”

Amanda raises her eyebrows. When she does this, he notes, she looks remarkably like Todd. “We broke into a CIA base to get you, dude. I think that’s pretty definitive proof that we like you.”

“Yes, but…” he doesn’t have anything beyond that, so he trails off. He doesn’t know how to phrase it, the feeling in the pit of his stomach that he isn’t good enough and the voice in the back of his mind whispering that he doesn’t _deserve_ people who break into CIA bases for him. Amanda’s watching him like she knows, anyway. She puts her cigarette out and places it in the little plastic bag she’d brought with her, evidently for such a purpose. She drops her head on his shoulder. Hesitantly he puts an arm around her. It’s what he’s done with Bart, and the same principle must apply here, because she doesn’t move it.

“Rules are don’t be a dick,” she says. “We don’t lie to each other. We keep an eye on each other. After that, everything else is improvisation.”

Dirk swallows. “All right.” A beat. “You promise you won’t tell anyone else about- about what we’ve been discussing?”

“The Death part or the friends part?”

“Any of it.”

Amanda holds out a pinky. “Pinky swear.”

Dirk knows what _that_ is at least and interlocks pinkies with her. “Okay.”

She withdraws her pinky but not her head. “Grunge and emo are music genres and scenes, by the way. Emo means Todd listened to a lot of the Smiths and wore a lot of black. Grunge means he grew his hair out, didn’t wash it a lot, and played a lot of Nirvana.”

“I don’t know who the Smiths or Nirvana are.” There is admittedly something freeing in saying he doesn’t know something.

“A sad kind of band. Todd always liked them way more than I did. Nirvana’s great, though, they’re another band. Are you a big music person?”

“I wasn’t when I was a kid. I didn’t see the point. After Blackwing though music seemed like this great luxury and I appreciated it more. Like books.” 

“What’s on your iPod?”

“Having one of those would require having money to spare, which I am not closely acquainted with. I tend to just listen to the radio. I liked hearing you two play. I wouldn’t mind learning how to play the guitar.” He’s never had such a long streak of honesty before. It feels refreshing.

“Todd’ll teach you.”

“Are you sure?”

“He might be an asshole, but he’s a good teacher. Pretty patient. Did you ever play an instrument?”

“Piano and tuba.” Dirk feels like those aren’t very punk (a genre he does know about if only because Todd told him no more pop radio when they were driving around looking for the soul-swapping machine and plugged his iPod on so he could listen to the Clash and the Ramones, and appears to be Todd’s favorite) but he can hear Amanda’s grin when she speaks.

“I can’t picture you with a tuba. You’re too skinny to carry around a tuba.”

“I was even skinnier then. Shorter, too. I disappeared behind the monstrosity. I hated the tuba.” Piano had been nice, though. Calming, in its way.

“Our parents tried to get me playing clarinet. I didn’t like it cause I wasn’t hitting things. Besides, I wanted to be in a rock band like Todd and rock bands don’t have clarinets.”

“Maybe they don’t just because no one’s invented one yet.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Amanda’s sounding sleepier and Dirk’s starting to feel a little drowsy himself.

“Will you introduce me to the music you like?”

“About half of it’s Todd’s taste in music, so if he tries getting you into his type of shit, there’s going to be some overlap.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Then sure.” She yawns. “That sounds nice.”

“Amanda?”

“Hm?”

Dirk closes his eyes. “Thank you.”

She doesn’t ask what for, which makes him grateful, because he’s not sure he could put the magnitude of what he’s thanking her for into words. “No problem, Dirk.”

They fall asleep like that.

 

About halfway into the second week, Dirk heads into the garage of their hideaway, sits on a crate, and watches Farah and the punching bag.

It’s an unspoken rule that Farah is left alone when her nervousness and anxiety reach a peak (she pretends she doesn’t have either of those things, but they all know, and she knows they all know, and they live in a state of not mentioning it on either side) and she disappears into the garage. But this time Dirk has a question, and he'd like to ask it here.

Farah has herself on a tight leash, always. She is wound like a spring, precise and planned and determined. Seeing her with the punching bag is a different story. When she’s using it she is wild, wearing nothing but a sports bra and sweatpants, blows lashing out at all ends, sometimes bringing a knee up to slam into the bag.

After a couple minutes of the loud and fast music she has set up blaring while she beats the shit out of the punching bag and Dirk sitting in silence waiting, Farah finally hits a button on the speaker and turns to him.

“What’s up, Dirk?”

“I want you to show me how to hit things.”

Her brow crinkles. “What?”

“I’m not very good at it, I think. I punched Martin once and he just laughed at me.” It had been early on when the Rowdy Three had been feeding on him, and Dirk had been desperate. It had hurt his hand more than it had hurt Martin’s face. “I can’t imagine I’ve gotten any better this time.”

“Why?”

“Because my life is strange and often violent and I should know how to punch when it gets the last one.” He doesn’t say that he’d also like to spend more time with Farah. He has spent a fair amount of time with all his friends but Farah. She doesn’t unwind easy, so he’s not sure how how to approach her the way he does with Todd and Amanda to spend time with her. Todd plays music for him. He reads Amanda Agatha Christie novels. But Farah is always focused on something. He knows Amanda said that part of friendship was being honest, but he thinks he can keep this little lie to himself.

Farah looks like she’s contemplating it. “I guess that’s a good idea. Come here. Let me see what you’ve got.”

Dirk puts his hand into a fist and presents it to her for inspection. She shakes her head.

“You’ve got your thumb on the inside of your fist. That’s how you break it. Here, let me show you.”

Farah and Dirk spend the next few days together with the punching bag. Farah is patient with him, shows him different stances and styles. His knuckles become bruised and bloody but he gets used to it. Farah is often concentrating on correcting him when he’s a little sloppy, but sometimes she talks, too.

“You know,” he eventually feels brave enough to say. “You don’t need to be so in control all the time.”

Farah’s circling him while he punches the bag. “If I relax, someone will get hurt. Everything gets kept on a leash if I keep moving.”

“That’s not necessarily true, though.” Dirk levels another punch at the bag. “You can’t be keyed up all the time. That’s the point where things get bad, if you’re holding on too tight you strangle what you’re clutching to death.”

“I’m not sure that metaphor worked.”

“Me neither,” he admits. “But do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

“I do.” She gives him a small smile. “I’ll consider it.”

Dirk considers it a victory when the next day Farah spends the day on the couch in sweatpants bingewatching Netflix shows. She doesn’t get up to go to the punching bag once.

 

After about three weeks since the breakout, Dirk wakes up from a nap. He’d been lying in bed listening to Amanda’s iPod and fell asleep at some point during “The Sunset Tree” _._ He can hear voices as he stumbles down the hallway.

“Do we still have any mac & cheese left or-“ he stops dead when he sees the scene before him.

Everyone is on their feet. The Rowdy Three are clustered a little protectively around Amanda. Bart and Ken are by the kitchen doorway. Farah and Todd are standing before someone who Dirk knows, but it still takes a second to register in the sudden silence.

“Dirk,” Riggins says, suddenly very rigid in military posture, hands clasped behind his back.

Dirk takes a deep, steadying breath. He’s just as rigid. “Colonel.” It surprises him how abruptly glacial his voice is. He looks to Farah and Todd, who look as startled as he is. “Why is he here?”

“He says we’re in the clear,” Todd answers. “We can go home.”

“ _Does_ he.” His hands are clenched at his side. “And how did _that_ happen?”

“Wilson and I had a talk.” Dirk bites back the _I wasn’t talking to you_ he wants to aim at Riggins because he does actually want to hear the way this goes. “She was operating without the knowledge of the rest of the agency. If you guys are left alone, certain information will not make it’s way into the CIA’s hands.”

“You’re blackmailing the CIA?” Todd asks.

Riggins shrugs. “Isn’t hard.”

Dirk looks at Farah. “Farah?”

“I believe him.”

He nods. “I trust my friends. Excuse me.” 

He makes his way out to the back of the cabin, carefully making sure he doesn’t brush by Riggins. He doesn’t really want to even touch him. He stands out behind the cabin and stares into the trees.

Dirk hears the door open next to him. He doesn’t look.

“I know I failed you.”

“You didn’t just fail me.” He plunges his hands into his pockets. “You failed all of us.”

“I know that.” Riggins’s voice has that calm to it that Dirk’s never been able to replicate in his own life, but it’s suffused with something else. Remorse? Normally he wouldn’t think he’d be able to tell if that’s actually there or if he’s projecting a little, but he’s pretty sure he’s right this time. “I know that there’s nothing I can do to fix this. The best I can do is try to make amends.”

Dirk wants to scream at him. He wants to shout _I don’t want your amends!_ at the same time he wants to accept Riggins’s olive branch. He doesn’t, he supposes, really know what he wants.

“You made a lot of promises,” he decides on. “And didn’t deliver on any of them. But you also helped get us out of Blackwing this time around. And you took a risk with the CIA to get us covered. And my friends trust your intentions are good. So I guess… we’re a little closer to even than we were before.”

Riggins seems to accept this, and they’re quiet for a moment.

“Did you have this conversation with the Rowdy Three or with Bart?”

“The Rowdy Three crowded around Ms. Brotzman and raised their weapons when I came in and Bart told me if I got too close she’d gut me with the tongs in the kitchen.”

Dirk can’t help a little smile. “That sounds like Bart.”

“You found good people.”

“They found me.”

They don’t talk again.

 

When they leave the cabin, Dirk leaves with a proper identity, papers and everything. 

“I could buy a car,” he tells Todd cheerfully when they arrive back at the Ridgely. “I don’t _want_ a car, but I could buy one.”

“Buy _me_ a car.” Todd’s apartment is a lot nicer than it was when Dirk last saw it. Apparently Dirk’s apartment has been left alone as well, so he gets back to move back in. He’s not entirely sure what’s going on with landlords and who he’s going to pay, but he’s sure it’ll work out.

“I never said I had the _money_ for buying a car, I just meant I had the _papers_ that mean that I _could_.”

“Oh, of course.” Todd’s grinning when he says it, though, so Dirk’s not that worried about it.

 

They establish the detective agency in an office building that’s not actually that far from the Ridgely. They don’t get a plaque, which is a little disappointing, but they get the name _Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency_ on a slot in with the other businesses, and that’s official enough for Dirk.

 

It doesn’t take long to start getting cases. They almost die during nearly every one. He loves all of them.

 

“Farah says that the McCourtneys’s alibis check out,” Todd says, closing Dirk’s apartment door behind him. Dirk doesn’t have rules about trivial things such as “door knocks” or “locks”. Todd keeps trying to insist that _he’s_ got rules about those sorts of things, but the lock on his door is still broken, and he, Farah, Amanda, and on one memorable occasion Ken and Bart, who happened to be swinging a dead possum, thoroughly disregard the policy about door knocking. He seems to be giving up on those practices, anyway. “They were at the bowling alley during the whole time frame of the robbery.”

“Just because they were at the bowling alley all night doesn’t mean they didn’t do it. There could always be clones involved. Or maybe even astral projection,” Dirk tells him from the kitchen. Most of Dirk’s life he’s worked in restaurants that feed one at least two square meals a day if one works there, so cooking is a dubious adventure at best with him. Todd, who Amanda says was legendary in college at cooking on a budget, has been trying to teach him to get better, but so far the thing Dirk’s best at is Kraft mac and cheese and ramen noodles. When he tells Amanda this in one of their twice-weekly phone calls (she is more often than not causing trouble with the Rowdy Three), she’d snort.

“Yeah,” she’d said. “That’s typically a college student’s diet, too.”

“Did the Rowdy Three break their agreement?”

Dirk squints at the recipe for microwavable cake in a mug. He’s pretty sure he can handle it. Baby steps and all that. “Not that I’m aware of, why?”

“Because it would give you an excuse for your apartment to look like this.”

Dirk looks up then to frown at Todd, who’s looking around. “My apartment looks fine. It’s a little messy, maybe, but-“

“I’ve seen the aftermath of hurricanes look neater.”

“I have a _very_ hard time believing that.”

“You have papers scattered _everywhere._ Kitten’s sleeping on a pile of your socks.”

“ _You_ still have a three spray painted on your wall.”

Todd opens his mouth and stops, looking a little defeated at that one. Satisfied, Dirk goes back to trying to figure out the recipe as Todd starts absently wandering around the apartment. 

“Did you do these?”

Dirk glances up to see Todd looking at the drawings he’s tacked up on the wall.

“Mm-hm.” He puts them up on the wall in lieu of photographs. He has none of those except for the pictures on his phone, but he has plenty of memories, and finally enough money to start committing them to sketchbook paper.

“Dirk, these are great.”

Dirk beams. “Thank you.” There’s a wide array there, from Todd cast in the shadows thrown by the magic lightbulb to Kitten being thrown in mid-air in the woods to Kitten sleeping on Dirk’s couch. He tends to do a lot of work of Kitten. He sleeps often enough that he’s a good stationary model. He’d had one of Bart as a little girl, but he’d presented it to her when they’d seen each other three weeks ago or so because he was fairly certain she didn’t have any photos of her own. She’d hugged him tightly without saying anything so he’d felt like it was a win on his part.

“I’m not very good at this kinda thing, that picture of the cowboy I drove back during the Patrick Spring case was about as good as that gets.” He leans in to look at one. “This one’s a little grim, don’t you think?”

He’s looking at one of the ones that Dirk’s done of Death. He’s missing the scythe. In one hand he holds a chessboard, in another a box. It’s impossible to tell what the box might be made of, due to Dirk having drew it in pencil, but if it had color, then the box might have been made of mahogany.

“You think?” Dirk asks absently. “I thought it was a rather good likeness. Do you want any of this strange mug cake? I’m at _least_ 73% certain it’s edible.”

 

Bart and Dirk are dashing through a field in the middle of the night as the rain pours down on top of them. They’re soaked and they haven’t seen yet who it is that’s chasing them, but they’re certain they’re being chased. It’s certainly whoever committed the murder in Dirk, Todd, and Farah’s latest case, but Dirk’s not _actually_ sure who that is yet, so it’s a mystery.

“Can’t you do your-“ Dirk yells at Bart while miming shooting a gun.

“Nope!”

“Why not?”

“Not supposed to yet!” 

Dirk and Bart have continued to be close since the Blackwing breakout. She acquiesced to the request for her to get a phone and they’ll text each other photos from throughout their day. Dirk’s requested no more pictures of dead people and since then it’s fairly standard. A picture of Ken driving from her and a picture of Todd and Amanda jamming together from him. They’ve called each other more than once after a nightmare of Blackwing. There’s a sweetness to her that is in no way dented by the fact she’s probably killed more people than Dirk has ever met. She is one of the people Dirk is closest to in the world, and he feels no qualms in saying that he loves her.

This doesn’t change the fact that right now, he wouldn’t mind strangling her.

“There’s _nothing_ you can do?”

“You know how this works! People die when they’re supposed to!” Even in the dark he can see the way her eyes suddenly snap to movement and shift. She raises her gun and fires while they move. The recoil from the gun is evidently enough that it throws her balance off while she’s running and she goes down on the soft, wet grass with a little startled noise. Dirk tries to skid to a stop next to her but as it turns out skidding is easier said than done when the ground is really begging for an excuse to become mud and he hits the Earth with an “oof”. He manages to wriggle his way onto his stomach and turn himself around to see Bart sitting up. She’s covered in mud, the blue dress she was wearing now completely stained brown. There’s a tuft of grass on top of her hair.

“I got-“ she spits mud out. “I got him.”

Dirk can’t help it. He giggles. Bart blinks owlishly at him.

“What?”

“You’re just. You’re just. You’re _drenched_ in mud. And you’ve got a little-“ he gestures to the grass. She reaches up, pulls it out of her hair, and stares at it. Dirk can’t tell for a moment if this is going to be one of the frankly numerous occasions where their senses of humor diverge, but after a few seconds of staring at the grass, she looks up at him and cracks a grin.

“You, too.” She points at him, still lying flat on the ground. “You’re just soakin’ it in.”

Dirk starts laughing. She does too, starting off with cracking snickers and moving into full belly laughter. Both of them start doing so hard enough that there’s snorting involved. Once he’s composed himself somewhat, he stands up and holds out a hand to help her up. She takes it, but the force of him trying to help pull her up just yanks them both down hard. They break into laughing again.

HAVING FUN?

The two of them look up and grin widely. 

“Tremendously,” Dirk answers. “You _did_ get him.”

“I _told_ you I did.” Bart gives a little wave. “Hey, big guy.”

HELLO, BART.

“Can you help us?” Dirk asks. “We’re having trouble implementing the concept of ‘upright’.”

Dirk gets the impression they’re being eye-rolled at. Bart must feel it, too, because she says “how do you do the eye-rolling thing when you ain’t got eyes?”

Death is silent.

“Rules,” Dirk and Bart say at once under their breath. It’s become an in-joke with them. Even when it comes to things not pertaining to Death. If there’s something either of them don’t understand, it’s _rules_. It gains them the baffled look of everyone else around them, except for the Rowdy Three, who will all look away and try very hard not to appear amused.

“Can you tell us if it was Charmain or Riddell?” Dirk asks. “I know it was one of the two and we’re going to see the body soon, anyway.”

IT WAS THE TALL GREASY LOOKING GENTLEMAN WITH THE PONYTAIL.

“Riddell. I knew it.”

“No, you didn’t,” Bart objects. “Heard you say this morning that you were 65% sure it was Charmain.”

“Well, that was _this morning_ , I could have had a change of opinion since then.”

“Could’ve,” she agrees. “Didn’t, though. Also he’s gone.” 

So he is. 

“We should call back,” he muses. “They’re probably wondering where we’ve gotten to.”

 

Dirk and Bart figure out where they are and drag Riddell’s body while they trudge until they reach a road. Dirk sits down and Bart dumps the corpse a short distance from them before she sits down next to him while Dirk calls Todd, having never been happier to have sprung for a waterproof phone case. By now the sun is on it’s way to rising and while the sky is still cloudy the rain has stopped. He and Bart sit by the road, slowly drying out.

“You tell your people about him?” Bart asks, apropos of nothing.

“Who?”

“Y’know. The big guy.”

“Oh. No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s… complicated.”

Bart leans back on her elbows a little. “I got time.”

“It started because, well. Not because I didn’t _trust_ them, but because there’s no _good way_ to tell someone you can see Death. And now I don’t want them to. I don’t know. Think I’m crazy?”

“I told Ken.”

“Really? What did you say?”

“I said that I saw Death.”

“What was his response?”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I mean, he had some questions, I guess. But he believed me, even if he can’t see him.”

“Huh.”

“You should tell ‘em.”

Dirk raises his eyebrows. “Since when have you become such a fountain of honesty?”

“You ever hear me tell a lie?”

He has to give her that one and he nods accordingly.

Bart bites at her nail absently, then pulls a face when the dirt hits her tongue. “Our people already think we’re crazy. They just seem to love us anyway.”

“Yes,” Dirk agrees thoughtfully. “How on Earth did that happen?”

She shrugs. “I dunno. Point is, they should go into somethin’ knowin’ all the facts. They don’t know all the facts if you don’t tell ‘em.”

Dirk sighs. “I will. Eventually. Amanda already knows, she can see him when the Rowdy Three take her pain away.”

“She hasn’t told the rest of ‘em?”

“I asked her not to.”

“Huh.” 

They abandon the conversation to sit in companionable silence. Todd, Farah, and Ken arrive not long after. Dirk notes that once upon a time, Todd might have freaked out about the two of them sitting there, absolutely filthy, with a body that they clearly caused the death of close by. As it is, the only real reaction he has is to say “didn’t you think it was Charmain and not Riddell?” 

Dirk scowls, letting Farah help him to his feet as Bart staggers to hers. “Everyone’s a critic.”

“All right, we gotta go. Places to go, people to kill.” Bart and Dirk hug. “Say hello to the big guy for me if you see him, alright?”

Dirk smiles a little as she pulls away, already headed for the car with Ken without waiting for an answer. “I imagine you’ll see him before I do,” he calls after her.

She gives him one of her more roguish grins. Ken waves.

“Glad you caught your dead man.”

“Thank you.”

The two of them drive off.

“Who’s the big guy?” Todd asks. Dirk winces. He should have seen that coming.

“Ah. Well. It’s complicated. Look, we caught the bad guy!”

Farah and Todd shoot each other one of those looks they think he doesn’t notice when he’s being odder than normal, but they drop it.

 

Dirk spends a lot of time deliberating over it.

“Be honest,” he asks Amanda when she picks up the phone around two a.m. one of the nights he’s thinking it over. “What would your reaction have been if I’d said to you ‘Amanda, I can see the actual form of Death and he’s rather fond of cats’?”

“Um…” He can hear in that single syllable her trying her best to dislodge sleep and feels a little guilty that he woke her up. But she’s the only one he can currently come to with this problem who hasn’t been seeing Death for years. “Maybe leave the cats part out of it? That could be a little much.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. You admitting you can see Death is weird enough without having to absorb that he likes cats, too.”

“I thought it was humanizing.”

“Nope. Just extra weird on top of the already weird.”

“Hm.”

“Was that it?”

“Yes. Thank you for listening. Sorry for waking you.”

“S’fine. G’night, Dirk.”

“Good night, Amanda.”

 

The decision gets taken out of his hands when it comes to Farah about a month later, when they’re being held captive in what Dirk thinks is a basement converted to a cell in which to hold kidnapped plucky detectives, lit with a single hanging lightbulb.

“You managed to call someone before they got us?” Farah asks while she’s coaching Dirk through fashioning a sling for her left arm, which is almost certainly broken, with her leather jacket.

“Bart. She was in the neighborhood yesterday when I talked to her, so she’s not that far away.”

“Okay.” 

“Soon enough”, it turns out, still hasn’t happened in about twenty-five minutes. A noise sounds from above and Farah looks up sharply.

“You think that was her?”

Dirk doesn’t react. “Nope. Definitely not.”

“How do you know?”

Dirk’s very tired and a little worried about their chances. He doesn’t very much care about the proper way to go about things right now. “Because Death isn’t here.”

“What?”

He sighs. “I can see Death.”

“…metaphorically speaking, right? You’re talking about metaphorically speaking.”

“No. Death. He’s very tall. The form of a skeleton in hooded black robes. Usually he has a scythe, which I personally think is a bit overkill, but I’m not the anthropomorphic personification here, so maybe I don’t know.”

“Anthropomorphic personification.”

“Yes.”

“Of Death.”

“Yes.”

“That you can see.”

“Not just me.”

“Who else?”

“All the Blackwing subjects. And Amanda, when the Rowdy Three take her pain.”

“You’ve got other witnesses.”

“Yes.”

Farah shifts a little. She looks like she’s struggling. “That’s… that’s a lot to take in. I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s okay.” Dirk pulls his jacket a little tighter around him. It’s chilly down here. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Does Todd know?”

“I told you. I didn’t know how to tell you. I don’t know how to tell him either. It’s a very daunting subject.”

“Yeah, I can see why.” 

“Is this going to pique your anxiety? That’s the last thing I wanted to do, I shouldn’t have said anything, I’m sorry.”

“I… don’t know. I’m not sure. Is there… is there an afterlife? Where do they go? Could I apologize to Patrick?”

“I don’t know the answer to the first two and no to the last one. There are things I can’t know. There are rules.”

“That’s why you and Bart say that.”

“Yes.”

Farah takes a deep breath and then winces when it jostles her arm. “This one’s going to take some getting used to. There’s a lot of crazy shit that goes on in our lives now and I accept it, that’s fine, it’s fine, but this one’s a big one and it’s going to be a while being this one’s fine.”

This could have gone better. “I understand.”

She must hear the way Dirk’s heart is sinking somehow because she shoots him one of her softer looks. It’s the kind he sees when they’re all doing a movie night or she’s relaxing on the couch with a book, an occurrence he sees more often than he used to. “This doesn’t mean I think you’re insane or that I like you any less.”

His heart does an abrupt 180 and soars. “Thank you.”

Farah leans her head back against the wall, evidently fading fast. “You’re welcome.”

There’s a _bang_ from upstairs. They wait for a couple minutes.

I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN OUT OF HERE BY NOW, THANKS TO YOUR FRIEND.

Dirk shakes his head. “Farah’s arm is broken. She can’t get us out of here the way she normally would.”

I SEE. YOU ALL BREAK SO EASILY.

“Says the anthropomorphic personification.”

Farah’s looking between Dirk and where Dirk’s looking at what must be empty air to her. “Is he here?”

“Yes. I think it’s safe to assume Bart’s probably here, too.”

As if on cue, Bart and Ken stumble into the basement, a gun held loosely in Bart’s hand.

“You both look terrible.” Bart looks at Death. “Hey, big guy.”

“Hello, sir,” Ken adds. 

GOOD AFTERNOON.

“You can see him, too?” Farah asks.

“No,” Ken answers. “I just want to be polite.”

Bart raises her eyebrows at Dirk. “You told her?”

“It just sort of happened.”

“Good for you.”

I HAVE PLACES TO BE. Death disappears as Bart grabs a giant wrench in the corner of the room and starts hacking away at the lock to get them out.

 

Farah adjusts to Dirk’s latest revelation and doesn’t react when the two of them are alone together and Dirk starts talking to what appears to be himself on a case except to say “tell him hello for me”. 

This just leaves Todd.

He spends a lot of time thinking how he’s going to do this. In the end, he decides on doing it when Todd’s sitting on the couch in Dirk’s apartment, reading a book on lock picking, something he’d decided to try and give a go at. Dirk sits on the floor cross-legged in front of him.

“So.”

“Uh-oh.”

“What do you mean, _uh-oh_?”

“Whenever you say ‘so’ like that, it means something’s about to happen.”

“Not _always._ ”

“No, pretty much always.” Todd puts the book aside with a slight smile, though. “Okay, so what?”

“It is entirely possible that there is a thing I haven’t told you.”

“…okay.” Now Todd looks like he’s bracing himself and damn it, that’s not what Dirk wanted. He tries again. 

“It’s not a dangerous thing, or a thing that’s bad. It’s just a thing about a thing.”

“A thing about a thing?”

He _rehearsed_ this, come _on_ , Dirk. “When I was thirteen, this man died in front of me. Car accident. He hit the tree in front of our house.”

Todd’s forehead crinkles but he doesn’t say anything. 

“I’d just gone out to get the mail and suddenly there was this car that came out of nowhere, rushed by me, and just _bam._ But that wasn’t really the part that surprised me the most. It was that there was this… this form standing there. He was there to collect.”

Todd’s brow furrows a little further. “Collect? Collect what?”

“The man who died in the car. It was Death. I can see Death.”

“I mean, if you see someone die, you’re seeing death.”

“No, not death, _Death._ ”

“What’s the difference?”

“The second one has a capital D.” Dirk feels like he’s not explaining this properly. “Death is a figure. A being. He can walk and talk and _maybe_ do a handstand, I never got confirmation on whether or not he tried to do that. He won’t answer my questions about it, though, so I sort of assume he tried and failed.”

Todd looks disbelieving. Dirk saw that coming. “So Death is a person and you can see him.”

“He’s not a person. We’re people. Death is infinite. But yes, I can see him.”

“Who else?”

“The Blackwing subjects. Your sister, when the Rowdy Three take her pain away. Farah knows but she can’t see him.”

Todd looks away and Dirk waits to see if he’s about to be thrown out of his own apartment due to insanity or maybe if he’s going to call Farah to ask if he’s had a concussion lately. Dirk wrote a very long list out of all the things Todd could do to try and fix Dirk’s conviction that he could see a figure not a lot of people believed in. 

Todd looks back. “Okay.”

Dirk rears back a little in surprise. “Really?”

“Yeah. I mean, we lead a _really_ weird life, and you’re wrong about a stupendous amount of shit, but you seem to really believe it and if the others can see it-“

“Him.”

Todd doesn’t miss a beat. “If the others and Amanda can see him, then I don’t see why I shouldn’t believe that this is just an extra facet of weirdness.”

Dirk is stunned. “I didn’t. I thought you wouldn’t believe me.”

Todd shrugs. “I’m trying out this thing where I trust my friends even when they tell me crazy shit.”

“That sounds like a good policy.”

“I’m saying that I believe you but it might take a little while to convince myself.”

“That’s. Yes. Makes sense.”

“So, uh. What does he look like?”

Dirk points at the drawing of Death on the wall.

“That looks a little unnerving.”

“Really? It barely ever bothered me. He doesn’t have the scythe there, I’m not quite sure where he put it but he’s Death, he’s got his tricks.”

Todd looks back at Dirk, face shrewd. “He’s where you got the chess piece. He visited you in Blackwing?”

“Yes. Bart killed a guard so he was around anyway. And he visited me a few times the second time around. He said it was a personal call.” Dirk smiles fondly. “He likes me, even if he won’t admit it.”

“This is…” Todd shakes his head like he’s trying to dislodge cobwebs. “This is weird.”

“That was Farah’s reaction, more or less.”

“Okay. So. Death. Okay.” Todd nods. “I’m good. We’ll be good.”

Dirk beams. “Glad to hear it.”

 

The Rowdy Three feed on him in his apartment politely. Gripps even asks how his day’s been first, and Cross stacks up Dirk’s books so they’re out of the way. It’s very strange. Dirk’s not sure he’ll ever get used to be cordial with them.

When they leave, Death is looking at the drawings on Dirk’s wall. He points at the one of himself.

THIS IS VERY GOOD.

“Thanks.”

I AM SURPRISED THAT YOU PICKED THIS MEMORY

Dirk stands next to Death and looks at the drawing. “You came to a very scared and very lonely kid with a game and the promise of company and good treatment. It’s one of the best memories I have. Of course I’m going to draw it.”

OH.

Dirk comes to a split second decision. He takes the drawing off the wall and presents it to Death. “Here. You can take it with you, if you want. A thank you, I guess.”

It’s a very long thirty seconds that they stand there, Dirk proferring the piece of paper and Death standing still. Slowly, Death reaches out and takes the drawing.

THANK YOU.

“You’re welcome.”

I DO NOT JUST REFER TO THE DRAWING.

Death disappears, as he is wont to do, leaving Dirk with a warmth in his chest.

 

It’s just Todd and Dirk in the room as Todd frantically types on the huge computer console. Dirk’s ripping wires out of the wall at random. Todd’s better at computers, so he got the job of trying to change the commands on the program so it doesn’t kill everyone in a ten mile radius. Dirk’s working with the wires because it seems like the thing to do.

The humming in the air suddenly stops, and the computer screen goes black. Dirk pauses from where he’s yanking on a particularly thick cable. “Is that it?”

“Yeah.” Todd grins in relief. “Yeah, I think that’s it.”

Dirk stands next to him to stare down at the computer. “Oh, good.”

There’s a _ping_ as a bullet whizzes past them and hits something. Dirk grabs Todd’s arm and yanks him to the side as one of Richardson’s goons comes rushing in with a gun. He hits one of the wires that Dirk had pulled that was dangling from the ceiling that he’d accidentally stripped that also happens to be on top of a puddle of water, jerks with electricity, and hits the ground.

Todd lets out a little scream. Dirk’s grip on his arm tightens in case something’s happening that he should pull Todd away from again.

“What is it? Did someone hurt you? Is it an attack?”

Todd points a shaking finger to where Death is standing by the body, seemingly incapable of speech.

“Can you… hold on, can you…” Dirk can’t get the words out. He lets go of Todd’s arm. “Do you see now?”

“No.”

He holds onto Todd’s arm again and he flinches. Death is staring at the pair of them.

AS ALWAYS, Death muses. Todd flinches on hearing the voice. YOU CONTINUE TO BE FULL OF PECULIAR SURPRISES.

Dirk’s feeling a little dazed. “Thank you, I think.”

Death takes a sideways step and disappears. 

 

Todd doesn’t speak until they get back to the Ridgely. They head into Todd’s apartment because it’s closer. Todd sits heavily on the couch. Dirk makes him coffee. He’s tried to explain the wonders of tea before, but if he’s stressed he should have a familiar beverage and he doesn’t have the right tea equipment anyway. Dirk firmly puts the mug in his hands. He takes it, but he doesn’t drink it. Dirk sits next to him on the couch and starts reading one of Todd’s books about the origins of each lyrics of Beatles songs. Todd slowly starts drinking the coffee, which Dirk takes as a good sign.

Finally, he speaks. “I believed you, but I didn’t believe you.”

Dirk sets the book aside and waits. 

“I mean, I _believed_ you, intellectually. I listened to you, and I talked to Amanda and Farah and Ken a little bit, too. And there was no way all of you could be sharing the same delusion, so I believed you. But there’s a big difference between believing someone and, you know, actually _seeing_ it.” He takes another sip of the coffee. “How did that happen? How could I see him?”

“I think it was because I was touching you. If I’m touching you and he shows up, we can both see him.”

“How?”

Dirk shrugs. “I’m a conductor for the Universe. If I touch you, you become part of that conductor.”

“Okay. Okay.” He puts the mug on the coffee table. “His voice was… a lot.”

“You get used to it.”

“You get used to hearing the voice of Death,” Todd whispers. “Our lives are _insane._ ”

“That’s hardly news, Todd.”

Todd snorts. “I’ll give you that one. You’re right,” he adds. “That drawing was a good likeness.”

“Thank you.”

Kitten climbs into Todd’s lap and Todd absently starts petting him.

“Are you going to be all right?” Dirk asks. He doesn’t like the disoriented, almost vacant look on Todd’s face.

“Yeah. I think I’m just gonna. It’s a lot to adjust to.” He scratches under Kitten’s chin. Kitten purrs. “I wouldn’t mind hearing stories about him someday, when I’m less… whatever this is.”

Dirk smiles. “I’d like that. I have quite a few.”

 

Time passes.

Todd adjusts to the presence of Death that he sees occasionally. The first time Dirk tries the trick with Farah, Farah goes entirely rigid but still gazes at Death determinedly, like she’s trying to have a stare off with a being who has no eyes. Eventually he looks at Dirk.

IN MANY WORLDS, SHE WOULD BE AN ARMY ALL OF HER OWN.

“She already is,” Dirk answers. Death dips his head and vanishes. Farah looks staggered.

“Did I just win a stare off with Death?”

“You did,” he confirms. “ _And_ he complimented you. This is a good day for you.”

She squeaks a little, then makes Dirk promise never to tell anyone about that particular noise. He agrees.

Amanda and the Rowdy Three drop by occasionally. Dirk likes Amanda showing up not only because she’s wonderful, but because there’s always guaranteed to be an adventure. His favorites are the time she tried to show him how to drive the Rowdy Three’s van and the time they went looking for oranges but found men with Uzis instead.

Bart shows up every few weeks. Sometimes she brings back souvenirs for Dirk, like a charm bracelet she found in the purse of a drug dealer she killed, or a box of chocolates from a mob hangout. He’s always touched, and lets her and Ken stay at his apartment when they come around.

They gain cases quicker and quicker, until Todd no longer needs to have a side job and can afford to work full time at the agency. Farah gives up trying to claim she’s only the benefactor of the organization and admits she’s a proper detective with them. 

For the first time in Dirk’s life, things are more good than bad.

 

“Why are you doing this?” Todd yells, holding on for dear life as Dirk weaves the Range Rover through the streets. “Did you ever rent this car?”

“I found it,” Dirk shouts back, trying to concentrate. It’s very hard with Todd yelling at him like that. “It had the keys in it and the windows open so really I’m conveniently liberating it. It deserves someone who will treat it better.”

“You don’t give two shits about cars _,”_ Todd bellows, cringing as Dirk comes a little closer to a curb than he would have liked when taking a corner. “You told me once that they’re only a means to an end, you don’t give a shit about ‘liberating’ it.”

TODD HAS A POINT, YOU KNOW.

Dirk yelps, jumping a little. He checks the rearview mirror to see Death sitting in the backseat.

“Why are you even here? Neither of us should be dying!”

THERE IS A MAN TIED UP IN THE TRUNK WHO IS, AS YOU MIGHT SAY, ON HIS WAY OUT.

“Oh, _wonderful._ ”

“Death is here?” Todd looks like he’s about to have a conniption. “That’s great, that’s a _great_ sign.”

“He’s not here for us, apparently there’s a man dying in the trunk.”

“That’s even _better_ , perfect.”

“It’s _fine_ , we’re going to be _fine_ , I’m _very_ good with cars.”

YOUR TRACK RECORD WITH CONVENIENTLY LIBERATED VEHICLES SUGGESTS OTHERWISE.

“No!” Dirk points behind him. Last year he might have twisted all the way around to correct Death but he’s been told that it’s bad to look all the way around oneself when driving. “No, this is _not_ like those seven other times I took cars, this is going to be _fine._ ”

“You’ve stolen _seven other cars?_ ” The conniption face increases. “What happened to them?”

HE’S DAMAGED ALL OF THEM.

“I _haven’t_ damaged all of them,” he snaps. “The Corvette was traded, I’m sure it’s still just fine.”

AN EXCEPTION TO THE RULE, THEN.

“Even Death knows this is bad,” Todd mutters, flattening himself against his seat a little further when Dirk only just misses hitting a stop sign. “That’s not a sign or anything.”

“We’ve got them!” Dirk points at the Sonata that’s just ahead of them. “See, my driving is good for something.”

“Yeah, good for making me want to throw up.”

“Please don’t do it in this car, it’s new.”

“You can’t say that if you’ve stolen the car, new rules.”

YOUR FRIEND IS SENSIBLE.

“ _Do not take his side._ ”

“Ha.” Todd sounds smug. “We outnumber you.”

Dirk ignores them. “Call Farah and Amanda, tell them we’ve got the Jamesons in our sights and where we should meet them. And no more comments about my driving.”

Todd rolls his eyes, but pulls out his phone. As he’s dialing, Dirk senses Death lean forwards a little.

DESPITE THE FACT YOU ARE MOVING AT A HIGH VELOCITY CHASING CRIMINALS WHO HAVE USED TIGERS AS A WEAPON, YOU SEEM THE HAPPIEST I HAVE EVER WITNESSED FROM YOU.

Dirk considers while Todd is having a rapid conversation with either Farah or Amanda, Dirk’s not sure which. “Yes. I think I am.”

HM. THAT IS GOOD.

Dirk grins. Death’s conveyance of emotion is rough at the best of times, but he understands what he’s trying to say.

Todd puts away his phone and puts a death grip back on the car. Todd gives him a look of irritation, but Dirk can see the spark dancing in his eyes, the joy of the chase, even if he might want to strangle him.

“Yes,” he agrees with Death. “I think it really is.”

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm working on this fic about the prisoners inside Blackwing and escaping and I'm super proud of it. I develop the relationships and dynamics between Dirk and Bart, and Dirk and the Rowdy Three, and I get weird about praising my own writing, but I feel comfortable saying it's pretty good. Only I'm stuck in the middle of it. So I have this idea of a quick oneshot about the Discworld/Good Omens Death interacting with Dirk, and I figured I'd write it real quick and post it and maybe I'd get some ideas for the other fic in the process.
> 
> Well, it's three weeks and 26,000 words later, and this is done. I don't know what happened.
> 
> Some story notes:
> 
> -I know that the Blackwing part dragged a little bit. I'm really taking my time with Blackwing in the other aforementioned fic, and that's everything I want out of a Blackwing fic, so I had a hard time writing a different version for this.
> 
> -I also know that the Rowdy Three don't come off great in this. Trust me, I adore the Rowdy Three and I'm really fleshing them out in the other fic. But I couldn't really do that here for some reason, the fic wouldn't let me. Consider it as it being from Dirk's POV, and how he's had to deal with them terrorizing him for sixteen years. He might not be super favorable about them.
> 
> -I'm thinking this might be a series, with another fic from Bart's point of view and another one from Vogel's, seeing as they both talk to him sometimes. This may mean certain scenes here get revised and updated to accommodate the new fics. We'll have to see.
> 
> This was admittedly tricky to write at times, but it was also a blast. I'm working on a bunch of other Dirk Gently fics (including a thieves & heist AU and maybe a soulmate AU for Farah/Amanda), but this one was a ton of fun to do and I'm glad I did it.
> 
> A huge shoutout to princessparadoxical on tumblr, who listened to all the ideas and scenes I bounced off her for this fic (and really, all my DG fics) carefully and gave good feedback, and encouraged me through the whole process. She's very nice and y'all should follow her if you're DG fans on tumblr.


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